The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is heading to theaters this month, and it's the fourth film of the franchise to be helmed by Francis Lawrence. The new film is based on Suzanne Collins' book of the same name and takes place 64 years before the first Hunger Games. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to interview Lawrence about the film, and he talked about working with Collins and creating the look of the fictional time period and the "fun" of bringing the 10th Annual Hunger Games to life.

"I think part of what was fun about this... I mean, maybe I did [learn lessons] just because I've done some of the Games before on the other ones. And so, when you come back to these Games, and even though the arena is very different and it's much more rudimentary, you want to make sure that you're approaching the Games in very different ways, and that the beginning of the Games and the way the Games start and all of that has really specific emotional values that differ from the ones we've seen before," Lawrence explained.

"More of what she and I would talk about is maintaining the rudimentary nature of the Games themselves," he continued. "And we had talked a lot about the sort of level of technology. And then, really, I worked with Uli Hanisch to kind of create the look of this. And I think Suzanne always gives me the freedom to go where I want to go with that. And we really just looked at reconstruction-era Berlin, 1945, the end of the war. How do you sort of rebuild from all that damage after the dark days of war? And that's kind of what we looked at and why we ended up really shooting in Berlin for most of the movie.

Who Stars In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes?

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes stars Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow, Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird, Viola Davis as Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul, Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom, Jason Schwartzman as Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, Hunter Schafer as Tigris Snow, and Josh Andr?s Rivera as Sejanus Plinth.

The movie will also include Fionnula Flanagan as Grandma'am, young Coriolanus Snow's grandmother. Isobel Jesper Jones is playing Mayfair Lipp, the daughter of the mayor of District 12. Honor Gillies will be making her professional acting debut as Barb Azure. Eike Onyambu has been cast as Tam Amber, Konstantin Taffet will be playing Clerk Carmine, Burn Gorman is Commander Hoff, Scott Folan is Beanpole, Carl Spencer is Smiley, and Michael Greco and Daniela Grubert have been cast as Strabo Plinth and Mrs. Plinth, the wealthy parents to Sejanus Plinth, Coriolanus's best friend. Nick Benson, Laurel Marsden, Lilly Cooper, Luna Steeples, and Hiroki Berrecboth are also a part of the cast.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set to open in theaters on November 17th. You can watch our interview with Lawrence at the top of the page.

This weekend with BlizzCon, the Overwatch 2 development team not only confirmed the new tank character for the game, the Samoan hero Mauga, but actually made him playable. Attendees of BlizzCon weren't the only ones that could get their hands on Mauga but Overwatch 2 players around the world were given the chance to try him out early for this weekend only. Mauga will officially arrive in Overwatch 2 with season 8, kicking off in December of this year. ComicBook.com was on hand for a group interview with a member of the Overwatch 2 development team, speaking with Hero Design Producer Kenny Hudson who offered details about Mauga's place in the game and how confident Blizzard is with his release.

Overwatch 2: Mauga's role in the meta

"So he's a rush down, kind of brawl tank, but he's also a tank that can hitscan and hit flying targets and a lot of those faster enemies. So we'd like to see him in comps where he can get boosted by Lucio or Lifeweaver can heal him a lot because he's a big target. But he can use his overrun to get into fights. Healers can heal him up, save him a little bit, but he can also take down those you know, pesky Pharahs or Echoes or something like that and pick them off like a Junker Queen couldn't or a Roadhog couldn't. "

Some Overwatch 2 players have already expressed a little bit of concern about the arrival of Mauga in the next season of the game, specifically because many of the hard-counter characters are in such a good play. Characters like Ana, Sombra, Symmetra, and Orissa are all good counters to Mauga that happen to be in good spots overall in Overwatch 2, does that deflate the arrival of Mauga when his counters are also great? Hudson responds:

"Well, we feel like we're dropping Mauga into a place where he's always he's also in a good place. He outputs a lot of damage. So I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with having a good counter to a hero. But Mauga;s upside is that he is going to output a ton of damage and we feel like that's okay for tanks too."

Overwatch 2 characters that pair with Mauga

Overwatch 2 remains a team based shooter, meaning Mauga's design and kit puts him in a place to work with some characters better than others. In development one of the first characters that it became clear would pair well with him was Ashe, since both can ignite enemy characters with fire, but one pairing that came as a surprise and wasn't considered at first was how Mauga plays with support character Lifeweaver.

"I definitely think Liveweaver pairs well," Hudson said. "Being able to rush in and kind of have that save waiting for you and a healing output sent on the way to your destination felt really good. And then I would say the Ash interaction once we figured out that that's what we wanted. We wanted to keep Margaret's theme of fire. We wanted, obviously Ash is going to keep her theme of fire for dynamite. And we didn't want players to have to learn two different visual languages for almost the same thing. When we put those two things together and figured hey like what if you got the bonus critical strike from Ashe dynamite like it kind of seemed like a match made in heaven while we were play testing."

Overwatch 2 will continue to drop new characters every other season

Since Overwatch 2 began with its season roll out, the development team has consistently released a new hero with every other season (starting with the even numbered seasons). When asked if Blizzard had any intention of revising their plans of a new hero every other season, Hudson was quick to note that they'll definitely stick to this because they have more heroes in development right now than they've ever had.

"Interestingly enough with the team the way we have it structured now and we're structured for Overwatch 2, this is actually the most amount of heroes that we've ever had in simultaneous development at one time. So I'm pretty confident looking at the schedule, which is my everyday thing, that we're pretty comfortable with where things are and pretty confident that we're going to hit our targets for releasing a new hero every other season."

Is Overwatch 2 free?

Since the launch of Overwatch 2 in October of 2022, yes, Overwatch 2 is now a free to play game.

Star Trek: Lower Decks wrapped its fourth season on Thursday with an episode that brought back some familiar characters and pushed the beloved series protagonists serving on the lower decks of the U.S.S. Cerritos into new places. The episode also featured some cinematic action and a grander tone appropriate for a finale and perhaps more. In the past, the biggest Star Trek shows jumped from television to film. Star Trek: The Original Series did it, with Star Trek: The Next Generation doing the same. Now Paramount+ is plotting new straight-to-streaming Star Trek movies, the first being Star Trek: Section 31 with Michelle Yeoh. ComicBook.com asked Star Trek: Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan if he had an idea for what a Star Trek: Lower Decks movie could look like. It turns out that he has multiple ideas spanning animation and live-action, as well as characters beyond those in Lower Decks.

"I have an idea for an animated Lower Decks movie," McMahan tells ComicBook.com. "I have ideas for live-action Lower Decks movies. And I have ideas for brand new, totally original Star Trek movies that don't tie into anything we've seen before. I think Star Trek is an amazing genre to think about. I love the idea of not micro but small-budget Star Trek movies, where you get the bigness of a movie set, but you get to tell a Star Trek story that drives across a moment instead of a thing that has to be dealt with, like a Khan."

He continues, "I think there are cool ways to make Star Trek movies that aren't quite like the Marvel system and aren't quite like DC or the superheroes in general, but I would love a world where there's going to be Star Trek movies all the time, and when you go, you don't know which crew it's going to be about or if it's going to be a comedy or suspense or a drama. I loved Captain America: The Winter Soldier, that it went from the first one [Captain America: The First Avenger] being a period piece superhero movie to being a spy thriller. I think there are ways to make Star Trek movies like that so that when you go, you don't know what you're going to get, you just know that you trust seeing that Starfleet Delta and that you're going to get a cool movie within that genre."

One might think that Paramount+'s first Star Trek movie project being about Section 31, a morally gray spy unit working largely independently of Starfleet's chain of command, is a step in that direction. McMahan would agree.

"Yes, and I am a big fan of Craig [Sweeny, writer] and everybody with Section 31," McMahan says. "I think it's going to be awesome. And I'm Mr. More when it comes to Star Trek. I want to see Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, which sounds awesome. I want to see more Prodigy. I want to see more movies. More, more and more like, let's go."

ComicBook.com also spoke to McMahan more in-depth about the Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 finale and what it means for the show's future. Here's what he had to say:

Star Trek: Lower Decks Creator Mike McMahan on the Season 4 finale

ComicBook.com: At what point did Mariner's backstory firm up in your mind? Was this always the plan? Because it feels like an explanation for her attitude towards taking responsibility in Starfleet could have gone several different ways. How did you end up landing here?

Mike McMahan: I knew for a long time that Mariner was affected by her time in the Dominion War. There's a lot of earlier hints about that in the series. I always wanted to tie her to that original "Lower Decks" foursome, because it fits into the timeline. I held back for a really long time partially because part of me doesn't want to tell people why Mariner or any character is behaving the way they are. I just think there's a chance that you're jumping the shark at that, and I also wasn't sure if tying Mariner directly to a character from a previous episode would be too distracting or too specific. And oftentimes, I'm too cautious with stuff like, "When can I bring T'Lyn in?" or "When can I promote them?" And I'm really, really careful.

This is such an important show to me, and this is such an important franchise to me, that I tend to maybe be too careful. Part of it is I want people to love watching Lower Decks. I don't want to make people feel like they don't know what's going on. A lot of the time, with the legacy stuff, I am waiting until I can find a way where if somebody has never seen the stuff I'm referring to, it doesn't matter because they still get it. Locarno is a bad guy from the past, Sito was an old friend, things that if you know it all, you'll know it. If you don't know it all, it's fine, or maybe it'll inspire you to go watch more Star Trek, which is even better.

But this season being about Mariner gets promoted, but Ransom won't let her get demoted -- there's that episode earlier on where he is like, "I know what you're up to. I'm going to support you unconditionally" -- that creates Mariner's story arc this season, that she can't do the pressure release that she usually does. And then when she's in that cave with that Klingon in a fight-to-the-death rain delay and she knows she can talk about stuff that will never get out because Ma'ah will die or she will die, it's kind of a win-win for her. That's the first time she's able to communicate honestly about something because she is in a space, weirdly a Klingon therapeutic space, where she can speak about it. It's so painful. That felt earned to me. That felt like a thing where I'm like, "This feels honest, this feels good," and that's when I let myself do that stuff.

I understand that it's not the same thing as what you're talking about, but it's also a little funny to hear you say you're too careful about things after giving us the "Naked Time" orgy scene a couple of seasons ago. I get it, but it's funny.

Well, it's funny too because it's a two-second thing that makes total sense within the world of the show. And I don't think of Star Trek as being a Puritan thing. I think of Star Trek as being human. It's funny. I wasn't the one who put that kind of stuff into Star Trek. But also at the same time, I want to make a show that makes you laugh. That makes you go, "God, that was fun." Or like, "Oh, I've never seen that before." I'm incredibly careful about canon stuff, and I'm a little less careful about, "Is this going to make you laugh out loud? Will this make you love this? Is this something you haven't seen in Star Trek before?" It doesn't have to be a history book. This is a whole different genre for Star Trek. And I am dancing between all the classic Trek and something totally new for Trek, and it just has to be a funny show on its own.

This finale ends up forming this third chapter of what is now a trilogy of episodes that started with "The First Duty" and then the original "Lower Decks" episode. Now we have this "Locarno trilogy" or whatever fans might want to call it. Was that on your mind, this larger franchise meta-story, or was your focus entirely on your characters?

No, I mean, it's a Nicholas Meyer Wrath of Khan. I was trying to make it very clear that Star Trek does this really well, and it did it once with features after an episode hadn't aired for a really long time. Now this is what Star Trek can do animated. You see that people a lot of the time are like, "Oh, animation is good for Star Trek because you can see more squiggly arms on aliens, or go to more places." But another power of it is it is this kind of magic of doing what Star Trek does best and saying that these one-off characters could, possibly, show up again.

You mentioned that Mariner goes through a lot this season. She comes to terms with a lot of things. I know you are deep into Star Trek: Lower Decks Season Five at this point. I know you probably don't want to say too much, but how different should fans expect her to be going forward now that she's resolved a lot of things?

Mariner hasn't resolved anything, but she's been unburdened by them. I think it's important to say that mental health isn't something you solve, it's something that you take care of and that you are aware of, and that communication and there not being a stigma about it and things that you carry don't necessarily have to be heavy. There is a possibility to diffuse them. Going forward, Mariner is Mariner. Mariner is a funny, loving, chaos-creating, sci-fi badass, who is just a little less burdened by the things that she was carrying before. I find, because I'm done writing season five, the Mariner in Season 5 is the Mariner that I love from Seasons 1 through 4, just happier.

As you said, this episode is very Wrath of Khan, including the ships hiding in the clouds sequence. Considering you had done those "Crisis Point" episodes that lovingly made fun of the Star Trek movies, was there any worry going into this about, "How do we get the audience to take us seriously now after we had so much fun taking the piss out of the Star Trek movies?"

No, because even when we're taking the piss out of the Star Trek movies, it's clear we love it and we're doing a cool movie. A lot of it is the framing and the stakes and the music a lot of the time. Something Lower Decks does well in my opinion is makes you laugh and then immediately pivot to real stakes. That's a skill of ours that is partially the performances, the editing, the music, but I'm never worried we're not going to make a moment land because my directors and everybody, they know the score, they know what we're up to and we can pivot like that.

A lot of this episode is about Mariner, but Boimler also gets his big moment in this episode when he gets to captain for the first time, which is interesting because, in one of the earlier interviews I did with Jack Quaid, I asked him about Boimler potentially becoming Captain. He's said something like, "I know he wants it, but I don't know if he actually wants it." Is this a reaffirmation that maybe he really does want it and will be good at it? What made this the right time and what does it mean for him now?

What spoke to me about that moment was that it ties directly to that Redshirts episode in a previous season where, in this moment, Boimler was trusted by Ransom and the Captain to get this done. And what I think is interesting is, people love that they see him in the chair because they believe in Boimler too. But what being a Captain is about isn't about sitting in a chair in the middle of a bridge during a high-stakes moment. Freeman is being the captain there. Freeman is putting herself in danger, flying through a fireball. Boimler is being trusted and he's in that chair, and it's great. But being a captain is more than just that moment, and moving forward, Boimler's now had a taste of the epic part of being a Captain, but you have to earn being a Captain in a lot of different ways, and the thrill of that does not take him across the finish line yet with where we're going.

I have time for one more question. Since I didn't get a chance to ask you about this towards the beginning of the season. I'm going to roll it back to the premiere to have you weigh in on one of Star Trek's biggest controversies: Did Janeway do Tuvix wrong?

Janeway didn't only do Tuvix right, she also did us right. Although, I don't know if she did him right, but look, listen, she's not in the Alpha Quadrant. She's surviving, and she's doing what she has to with the resources that she has. Now, did Tuvix beg for his life, and she still murdered him? Yeah, that was pretty rough. But you know what, dude? Did anybody, did any of us really want more Tuvix? I was relieved. I did not want to watch another five seasons of Tuvix. I didn't want to lose Tuvok for that. I think people are still allowed to argue about the ethics of Janeway's decision, which is fine. Sometimes things are not black and white. Sometimes you're allowed to do the right thing, but it not be good. Sometimes you can do everything right and still not win. But ultimately, I'm glad we didn't have to watch Tuvix again. What a sigh of relief that he wasn't in the next episode, Tuvixing it up.

That is the 100% correct answer. Thank you.

[Laughs] Of course.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4 Cast

Star Trek: Lower Decks stars "lower decks" crewmembers of the U.S.S. Cerritos Ensign Beckett Mariner (Tawny Newsome), Ensign Brad Boimler (Jack Quaid), Ensign Tendi (No?l Wells), and Ensign Rutherford (Eugene Cordero). Provisional Ensign T'Lyn (Gabrielle Ruiz) joined the crew in Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 3. The U.S.S. Cerritos' bridge crew includes Captain Carol Freeman (Dawnn Lewis), Commander Jack Ransom (Jerry O'Connell), Lieutenant Shaxs (Fred Tatasciore), and Doctor T'Ana, (Gillian Vigman).

Mike McMahan (Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites) created Star Trek: Lower Decks. In Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4, "an unknown force is destroying starships and threatening galactic peace. Luckily, the crew of the U.S.S. Cerritos isn't important enough for stuff like that! Instead, Ensigns Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford, and Provisional Ensign T'Lyn are keeping up with their Starfleet duties, avoiding malevolent computers and getting stuck in a couple caves - all while encountering new and classic aliens along the way."

How to watch Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4

CBS' Eye Animation Productions, Secret Hideout, and Roddenberry Entertainment produced Star Trek: Lower Decks Season 4. Secret Hideout's Alex Kurtzman, Roddenberry Entertainment's Rod Roddenberry and Trevor Roth, and Katie Krentz (219 Productions) are executive producers with showrunner Mike McMahan. Aaron Baiers (Secret Hideout) also serves as an executive producer. Titmouse (Big Mouth) serves as the animation studio for the series.

Star Trek: Lower Decks streams exclusively on Paramount+ in the U.S. and Latin America. In Canada, Star Trek: Lower Decks airs on Bell Media's CTV Sci-Fi Channel. Star Trek: Lower Decks will also be available to stream on Paramount+ in the UK, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and South Korea later this year.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is heading to theaters this month, and it marks the fifth film of the franchise to be produced by Nina Jacobson. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with Jacobson about the upcoming prequel, and she opened up about the casting process and the importance of finding the right people to play younger versions of known characters as well as new characters who are related to known characters. Jacobson also spoke about the lessons she learned from the previous films that she carried into this one.

"Well, I think what we've learned from the beginning is that Suzanne [Collins] gives us an incredible blueprint as a storyteller," Jacobson said of The Hunger Games author. "She writes from theme and character, and you know what is critical to her is always sort of critical to the movie, and so there's that side of it, which is just knowing that if I keep turning to her and keep reading the book and looking deeper in the book, we'll find the answers we need. And she's also great... She's not slavish in the adaptation. She knows that there are things that have to go, and so trying to make sure that even so, when you're compressing an act, how do you make sure that these characters really have enough time together and that you're not repeating a beat? Because there's new information in different scenes."

Jacobson continued, "And so in the beginning of the book, there's a lot more back and forth. You can't kind of keep back and forthing in a movie, so how do you hold on to what really matters? Just for me, following Suzanne's lead and also not being afraid of the themes, letting the themes really percolate, and also giving audiences a chance to not necessarily agree with each other, to kind of take different things from it, to have different ideas about the relationship of the characters and to hope that you've given people a complex enough movie that they might all have their own experience and not some unilateral intended experience."

Who Stars In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes?

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes stars Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow, Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird, Viola Davis as Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul, Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom, Jason Schwartzman as Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, Hunter Schafer as Tigris Snow, and Josh Andr?s Rivera as Sejanus Plinth.

The movie will also include Fionnula Flanagan as Grandma'am, young Coriolanus Snow's grandmother. Isobel Jesper Jones is playing Mayfair Lipp, the daughter of the mayor of District 12. Honor Gillies will be making her professional acting debut as Barb Azure. Eike Onyambu has been cast as Tam Amber, Konstantin Taffet will be playing Clerk Carmine, Burn Gorman is Commander Hoff, Scott Folan is Beanpole, Carl Spencer is Smiley, and Michael Greco and Daniela Grubert have been cast as Strabo Plinth and Mrs. Plinth, the wealthy parents to Sejanus Plinth, Coriolanus's best friend. Nick Benson, Laurel Marsden, Lilly Cooper, Luna Steeples, and Hiroki Berrecboth are also a part of the cast.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set to open in theaters on November 17th. You can watch our interview with Jacobson at the top of the page.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is heading to theaters this month, and it's based on Suzanne Collins' book of the same name. Every film from the series has been adapted from her stories, which has some fans wondering if she plans to write more. The new film follows 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) before he becomes the tyrannical president of Panem, which means the story takes place 64 years before The Hunger Games. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to interview Francis Lawrence who directed the upcoming film in addition to Catching Fire, Mockingjay - Part 1, and Mockingjay - Part 2. We asked if there are any more stories from The Hunger Games universe he'd like to see brought to life.

"I don't know," Lawrence began. "I think what I've always been interested in is the way that Suzanne writes from a thematic foundation. The original series is about consequence of war, many facets of those themes. This really is about the sort of 'state of nature' debate. And so I think if she were to come up with something else, I'm less interested in where it takes place within the world of Panem and even who the characters are, as long as it has that thematic foundation. And I know if Suzanne does it, it'll have it."

During our chat with Lawrence, the director also talked about adapting the longest book in Collins' best-selling franchise.

"I don't think it was really anything that we fought to keep in," Lawrence shared. "I think the trick was figuring out how to keep as much of the information in the story as possible, but we had to compress it because this is the longest book in the series. And so making sure that we can get it down to a feature-length, that was just the tricky part."

You can watch our interview with Lawrence at the top of the page.

Who Stars In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes?

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes stars Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow, Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird, Viola Davis as Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul, Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom, Jason Schwartzman as Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, Hunter Schafer as Tigris Snow, and Josh Andr?s Rivera as Sejanus Plinth.

The movie will also include Fionnula Flanagan as Grandma'am, young Coriolanus Snow's grandmother. Isobel Jesper Jones is playing Mayfair Lipp, the daughter of the mayor of District 12. Honor Gillies will be making her professional acting debut as Barb Azure. Eike Onyambu has been cast as Tam Amber, Konstantin Taffet will be playing Clerk Carmine, Burn Gorman is Commander Hoff, Scott Folan is Beanpole, Carl Spencer is Smiley, and Michael Greco and Daniela Grubert have been cast as Strabo Plinth and Mrs. Plinth, the wealthy parents to Sejanus Plinth, Coriolanus's best friend. Nick Benson, Laurel Marsden, Lilly Cooper, Luna Steeples, and Hiroki Berrecboth are also a part of the cast.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set to open in theaters on November 17th.

One of the many surprising and entertaining elements of Loki has been its musical score. Episode 3 of the Disney+ Original Series kicked things off with a remix of the Marvel Studios theme music, to fit in with the episode's 1893 timeline. Loki has carved out a nice niche in Marvel's TV catalog, as it continues to push the boundaries of the multiverse with Tom Hiddleston's God of Mischief making for a fine lead character. As for the creatives behind the camera, one got to talk about how they went about crafting the music behind Loki.

ComicBook.com spoke to Loki composer Natalie Holt, who was asked what it was like to play with Loki's musical score. "I did the umpire music with the Loki theme and played in that scene, and Episode 3 the music was kinda honky tonky, and it started with that string quartet at the beginning... it's like such a different sound palette," Holt said. "And then as we worked on the show I had the idea of the score playing and a piano in the background of the He Who Remains speech that he does with the machine that he's built."

She then discussed how she got to remix the iconic Marvel theme music. "And then a really late honor, 'How about we do a new version of the Marvel logo with a piano?' And everyone was like, 'Try it.' And it stuck." She then praised Peter Nichols, who worked on the score as well on Loki Seasons 1 and 2. You can watch Natalie Holt's interview in the player above.

Loki Season 2 premiered with lower ratings than Season 1

According to the latest streaming data from Nielsen, Loki's second season premiere saw a significant drop from the series premiere back in 2021. The company's new numbers reveal that the Loki Season 2 premiere from October 5th rounded up 446 million minutes of viewing time over its first three days on Disney+. The first season premiere pulled in roughly 731 million minutes of viewing time, based on Nielsen's metrics. That's a 39% drop from Season 1 to Season 2.

There are obviously multiple things potentially attributing to that drop, including the fact that the first season of Loki was one of the first MCU projects to be released after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 2023 has also seen a couple of poorly reviewed projects from Marvel Studios, including Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the Secret Invasion series, which may have caused less interest in the overall franchise.

Marvel Studios fan-favorite Tom Hiddleston stars in Loki Season 2, returning as the titular God of Mischief for another round of time-traveling hijinx on Disney+ on October 6th. Loki is once again joined by Mobius (Owen Wilson) as the two attempt to keep the timelines intact. After the events of Season 1 saw his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kill He Who Remains and unleash the wrath of Kang the Conqueror upon the Multiverse, Loki must once again embark on an adventure to keep reality from collapsing. Loki was last seen in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he and Mobius were keeping tabs on one of Kang's mysterious variants. Loki Season 2 will continue the story of the Multiverse Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The Nature Boy is All Elite. Ric Flair has signed a multi-year contract with AEW that will see him appear on television and will also make his Wooooo! Energy the official energy drink of All Elite Wrestling. Flair's AEW deal comes just a couple of weeks after he made his AEW debut, making a surprise appearance as Tony Khan's gift to Sting. Sting is currently on his farewell tour, as he will officially retire from in-ring competition next spring at AEW Revolution. Flair made it clear that he wants to be at that event and by Sting's side for his last couple of months, but this multi-year deal suggests that he will be doing much more than just working with his longtime rival.

Ric Flair Reveals AEW Stars He Wants to Work With

Ric Flair is just getting started with AEW.

Speaking to ComicBook.com, Flair responded enthusiastically about the idea of working with son-in-law Andrade El Idolo on AEW TV.

"I would love to manage him. There's not too many guys in the ring that are better than him technically. Man, he can do anything. You watch him and Bryan Danielson. He did some stuff I've never seen him do before and I've seen him do everything. He's unreal. He just needs a mouthpiece. He's been taking English for a couple of years, but it is just hard to certainly understand and can speak it."

Flair previously appeared in Andrade's corner at a Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide show in 2021. Andrade currently wrestles primarily on AEW Collision as a singles babyface.

Beyond his family, Flair pointed to one man at the top of his list: MJF.

"MJF most definitely. I've got to get Tony to let me be a heel for a moment," Flair said. "That kid is great. He's the top of his game right now is still very young."

While Andrade and MJF would be fairly new combinations for Flair, he also has plenty of familiar faces within the AEW locker room, including his final in-ring opponents Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett. When asked if there's a chance we could see a sequel to his and Lethal's iconic Wooooo!-off from TNA in 2010, Flair noted he's all for it.

"Oh, I'd love it. I'm a big fan of Jay. Hell, he and Jarrett owe me money!" Flair said. "They're great together. I'm happy for Jeff and I think the world of Jay Lethal, he's one of the most entertaining people in the world. He can do me and [Randy] Savage better than we could do ourselves."

All these possibilities lie in Flair's AEW future, which he says if the phone rings, he's ready to go.

"If they need me, I'm there," Flair said. "Tony is a great guy and money's not an object for Tony."

Loki's composer teased those final two episodes of the Disney+ series. It feels like things are headed for truly a truly epic conclusion with Loki. Natalie Holt spoke to ComicBook.com about her time working on the music for the series. However, there are some secrets too big to spill. "I'd say, I can't wait for people to see Episode 6," Holt told us. This echoes comments made by producer Kevin Wright and other people who have worked on the show. Episode 4's shocking conclusion shook the MCU's fanbase with that dramatic death. Now, Loki heads into the literal and figurative unknown as the TVA was destroyed last week. Check out what Holt had to say right here.

"And, for me, it was the most, just satisfying thing to write," the composer continued. "Yeah, I just felt, I feel kind of like so emotionally tied up with the character. Because I've been working on th show for such a long time now. What it feels like. And, you know, what happens to Loki, I feel like I go on this journey with him every time I worked on a season. So, I just feel... Yeah, it was sort of sad to say goodbye and I didn't want to stop working on it. Yeah, it feels... I can't.... Yeah. All I can say is I can't wait for people to see it."

What's Waiting In Loki's Next Episode?

Loki cinematographer Isaac Bauman spoke to ComicBook.com about the final two episodes. In his comments, he hyped Episode 5 and 6 with praise for the final shots. Loki has been through so much in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It makes sense that the current run of his series would stack up to the other Tom Hiddleston appearances in these movies. So many things have happened already, if the finale can live up to this hype, the fans will be satisfied.

"We shot the climactic sequence of the season, at least a major piece of it, the significant piece, on a single day, on a sound stage very near the end of our shoot," Bauman shared. "I think it was probably the most meaningful day of the whole production because you could feel just the weight of this story, Loki's story, which has gone on for so long, closing this chapter at least."

"It felt like once we're finished shooting this sequence, we as a crew, as creatives, we have now contributed a very significant chapter in the story of one of the greatest characters of our generation," Bauman added. "It actually felt that way on set, which is incredible."

Episode 5 and 6 Are The Best Of The Season

If this wasn't enough praise, producer Kevin Wright told Marvel.com to expect big things out of the last two entries as well. It feels like Episodes 5 and 6 are hiding some pretty big reveals. Despite a teaser for tonight's fifth installment trying to get rid of some of that mystery, there's still a ton to be answered as Loki Season 2 nears its end. Wright told the outlet that we haven't seen anything yet!

"What we always like to do in all of the scripts, and in all of our storytelling, is that thing you think is going to happen in Episode 6, or could happen in the finale or towards the end, what happens if we move that forward? What if we just accelerate all of the storytelling, hit it early," Wright said.

"I think that's the beauty of Episodes 5 and 6. If people liked Episode 4, I genuinely think 5 and 6 are maybe the two best episodes of the series," added Wright. "They're beautiful and they're profound. They're deeply moving. And we only get to go there because of that story acceleration."

How Will Loki Season 2 End?

Marvel Studios fan-favorite Tom Hiddleston stars in Loki Season 2, returning as the titular God of Mischief for another round of time-traveling hijinx on Disney+ on October 6th. Loki is once again joined by Mobius (Owen Wilson) as the two attempt to keep the timelines intact. After the events of Season 1 saw his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kill He Who Remains and unleash the wrath of Kang the Conqueror upon the Multiverse, Loki must once again embark on an adventure to keep reality from collapsing.

Loki was last seen in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he and Mobius were keeping tabs on one of Kang's mysterious variants. Loki Season 2 will continue the story of the Multiverse Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Do you think the end of Loki Season 2 can live up to the hype? Let us know in the comments!

The Nature Boy is back in a wrestling promotion. Ric Flair made his AEW debut this past October, surprising fans as Tony Khan's gift to Sting, who is set to retire from the ring at AEW Revolution in Spring 2024. Flair showed loved for his longtime rival and made it known that he wants to be on Sting's farewell tour alongside him, making note that he will be present at AEW Revolution next year especially. Knowing that Flair has ambitions to be with AEW until next spring at the earliest, many became curious as to if the 16-time world champion would be on a per-appearance deal or if he would sign a full-on AEW contract.

Ric Flair Signs Multi-Year AEW Contract

The Nature Boy is All Elite.

As announced in a press release, Ric Flair has signed a multi-year deal with All Elite Wrestling. Beyond his televised appearances, this contract will make Flair's Wooooo! Energy the exclusive energy drink of AEW.

Speaking to ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview, Flair detailed how this partnership came about.

"I actually texted him that we had an energy drink and asked if he would be interested in having a sponsor for the show," Flair said. "We started negotiating with him and then he called me and said, 'Would you want to come to work?' He had talked to Sting and I said, 'Hell yeah.' The only people that knew about it of course were Chad Bronstein (President and Chairman of Carma HoldCo, parent company of Wooooo! Energy), myself, Sting and Tony. I came in as a surprise and it just was a wonderful experience. Sting and I have been working together for 31 years. What a moment."

Flair has been associated with energy for his entire professional wrestling career, as few possess the stamina that Flair showed on a weekly basis inside the ring. That said, the energy drink business is new to the rolex-wearer.

"Chad came up with the idea. They brought it to me," Flair said. "Everybody knows Chad is a wrestling fan when he has time to be, but he grew up wrestling fan. He knows that all the arenas go Wooooo! anyway, no matter whether it's hockey, wrestling or whatever. I've drank Monsters and Red Bull and all that, and this drink puts 'em to sleep."

"It's an all natural energy. It's a functional mushroom, so it's not a psychedelic, that can be carried at any store," Bronstein added. "I saw Ric at the LA Rams game before we started working together. Every stadium, anywhere you go, they scream 'Wooooo!' What he has done is he created a culture with the Wooooo! Our whole thought process was developing Wooooo! Energy because Wooooo! creates energy, momentum in arenas on a daily basis."

Considering Sting is set to ride off into the sunset in just about five months, Flair inking a multi-year deal suggests that he will have more to do on AEW TV than just stand alongside The Icon. When asked who he hopes to work with, Flair pointed to one man.

"Oh, MJF. Most definitely," Flair said. "That kid is great."

AEW returns to television this Friday with AEW Rampage on TNT.

Batgirl still has a unique notoriety in the superhero space, after the film was suddenly canceled by Warner Bros. Discovery last year. The DC-inspired project had finished production before the plug was pulled due to cost-cutting initiatives, and fans have mourned the work in the film that won't get to see the light of day. That includes the score composed by Loki and Obi-Wan Kenobi's Natalie Holt, and while speaking to ComicBook.com about her work on Season 2 of Marvel's Loki, she shed some light on what her score would have entailed. Holt also revealed that she reached out to Batman composer Danny Elfman about carrying on the legacy of his Batman theme, which would have been used for Michael Keaton's return.

"I did sort of do a pass on the score," Holt explained in our interview, which you can check out above. "I'd scored it all the way through, and I'd spoken to Danny Elfman, actually. I started working on it and Adil and Bilal said 'We've got Michael Keaton here. We want to use his theme from the eighties.' I was like 'I'd like to just speak to Danny and see if he'd allow me to sort of work with his theme,' because I just thought that would be the best way to do it. My agent got in touch with his agent, and we ended up chatting, and that was the first time I spoke to him. He was just so generous and pleased to be asked. And he said 'It's so nice that you're asking permission and that you want to carry on this character's theme. That feels really good.' So, yeah, he was really excited for me to be playing around with his material. It's very sad that it didn't happen [and that] people didn't get to hear it. But I'm glad I got to meet Danny Elfman."

What Would Batgirl Have Been About?

Batgirl would have followed the origin story of Barbara Gordon, the daughter of Commissioner James Gordon, who becomes a superhero. Barbara has been a beloved part of the DC Comics canon for years, both as Batgirl and as the technology expert Oracle. The film would have starred Leslie Grace as Barbara Gordon, with directing from Ms. Marvel's Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah and a script by Birds of Prey and The Flash scribe Christina Hodson. The film would have also shown JK Simmons reprising his role as Commissioner James Gordon, and Michael Keaton reprising his role as Bruce Wayne / Batman. Also joining the cast was Ivory Aquino as Alysia Yeoh, and Jacob Scipio, Rebecca Front, Corey Johnson, and Ethan Kai cast in currently-unknown roles.

Why Was Batgirl Cancelled?

Batgirl was the first of many projects that were canceled or scrapped entirely, with Warner Bros. citing the move as a financial decision, as well as a change in streaming strategy.

"The decision to not release Batgirl reflects our leadership's strategic shift as it relates to the DC universe and HBO Max," a Warner Bros. spokesperson said in a statement when the cancellation was first confirmed. "Leslie Grace is an incredibly talented actor and this decision is not a reflection of her performance. We are incredibly grateful to the filmmakers of Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt and their respective casts and we hope to collaborate with everyone again in the near future."

What do you think of Natalie Holt's new comments about Batgirl's score? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is heading to theaters this month, and the prequel is set 64 years before the first film, which means some characters are returning as younger versions while others are new characters who are related to characters fans know and love. The film is also set to see the return of some behind-the-scenes staples. The movie is being helmed by Francis Lawrence, who also directed Catching Fire, Mockingjay - Part 1, and Mockingjay - Part 2. Nina Jacobson, who has served as a producer on every film in the franchise, is also returning. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with Jacobson, and she opened up about the film's casting.

"Well, of course, any time that you're casting somebody, like you say, who's related or a younger version, obviously you're going to lop off a whole bunch of people who could be great, but who just don't look like they would ever grow up to be that person," Jacobson explained. "So you have the demands of, 'Can I believe that this young man becomes that older man?' And then also on the Lucy Gray [Rachel Zegler] front, even though she's not related to anybody, she has to be able to sing to inhabit that performer's personality, but also to kind of convey both the sort of savviness and street smarts of this character."

"And to have those questions of like, 'Is she Songbird or is she Snake?' Because she's always singing, but she's also always got a snake, or not always, but a good amount of the time," Jacobson continued. "So, just a reminder that none of these characters are meant to be all one or the other. And so, you have to get actors who can bring that level of complexity and nuance. It's much easier to just play a straight-up good guy, straight-up bad guy, but to have to kind of live in the middle and the pull and the push, and we wanted audiences to also wonder, is it real or not real?"

Who Stars In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes?

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes stars Tom Blyth as Coriolanus Snow, Rachel Zegler as Lucy Gray Baird, Viola Davis as Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul, Peter Dinklage as Casca Highbottom, Jason Schwartzman as Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, Hunter Schafer as Tigris Snow, and Josh Andr?s Rivera as Sejanus Plinth.

The movie will also include Fionnula Flanagan as Grandma'am, young Coriolanus Snow's grandmother. Isobel Jesper Jones is playing Mayfair Lipp, the daughter of the mayor of District 12. Honor Gillies will be making her professional acting debut as Barb Azure. Eike Onyambu has been cast as Tam Amber, Konstantin Taffet will be playing Clerk Carmine, Burn Gorman is Commander Hoff, Scott Folan is Beanpole, Carl Spencer is Smiley, and Michael Greco and Daniela Grubert have been cast as Strabo Plinth and Mrs. Plinth, the wealthy parents to Sejanus Plinth, Coriolanus's best friend. Nick Benson, Laurel Marsden, Lilly Cooper, Luna Steeples, and Hiroki Berrecboth are also a part of the cast.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set to open in theaters on November 17th.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is heading to theaters this month, and while the prequel won't see any returning actors from the first four films, there will be some well-known characters back in action. The new film follows 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow (Tom Blyth) before he becomes the tyrannical president of Panem, but Snow isn't the only return fans can expect. The movie is also being helmed by Francis Lawrence, who also directed Catching Fire, Mockingjay - Part 1, and Mockingjay - Part 2. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with Lawrence, and he talked about adapting the longest book in Suzanne Collins' best-selling franchise.

"I don't think it was really anything that we fought to keep in," Lawrence shared. "I think the trick was figuring out how to keep as much of the information in the story as possible, but we had to compress it because this is the longest book in the series. And so making sure that we can get it down to a feature-length, that was just the tricky part."

You can watch our interview with Lawrence at the top of the page.

Francis Lawrence Regrets Splitting Mockingjay Into Two Movies:

In a recent interview with People, Lawrence revealed that he regrets splitting Mockingjay into two films. According to the director, the "two halves of Mockingjay had their own separate dramatic questions," but he still isn't sure if it was the right call for the fans.

"I totally regret it. I totally do. I'm not sure everybody does, but I definitely do," Lawrence revealed. "What I realized in retrospect -- and after hearing all the reactions and feeling the kind of wrath of fans, critics, and people at the split -- is that I realized it was frustrating. And I can understand it. In an episode of television, if you have a cliffhanger, you have to wait a week or you could just binge it and then you can see the next episode. But making people wait a year, I think, came across as disingenuous, even though it wasn't," he adds. "Our intentions were not to be disingenuous."

"In truth, we got more on the screen out of the book than we would've in any of the other movies because you're getting close to four hours of screen time for the final book. But," Lawrence admitted. "I see and understand how it frustrated people."

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is set to open in theaters on November 17th.

Loki Season 1 left viewers with one of Marvel Studios's biggest cliffhangers to date. The six-episode story culminated with Tom Hiddleston's titular trickster and Sophia Di Martino's variant confronting Jonathan Majors's He Who Remains beyond The Void. He Who Remains presented Loki and Sylvie with two options: allow the Sacred Timeline to continue flowing as normal, or kill him and send it spiraling into chaos. Sylvie chose the latter, resulting in Loki returning to a Time Variance Authority now run by He Who Remains's most sinister variant, Kang the Conqueror. A feverish Loki warns Owen Wilson's Mobius that this "terrifying" man is coming, leaving Mobius perplexed, as he has zero memory of Loki's existence.

With a cliffhanger that substantial in Season 1 and Kang's story guaranteed to continue until at least Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, there is some expectancy that Loki Season 2 will once again leave fans with more questions than answers.

Loki Cinematographer Teases Season 2's Final Shot

Speaking to ComicBook.com, Loki Season 2 cinematographer Isaac Bauman gave his spoiler-free reflection on filming this season's final shot.

"We shot the climactic sequence of the season, at least a major piece of it, the significant piece, on a single day, on a sound stage very near the end of our shoot," Bauman reflected. "I think it was probably the most meaningful day of the whole production because you could feel just the weight of this story, Loki's story, which has gone on for so long, closing this chapter at least."

Loki has been a staple of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since he debuted in Thor (2011). From taking over Odin's throne to standing toe-to-toe with Thanos, the god of mischief has had no shortage of marquee moments, and Bauman believes the final shot of Season 2 lives up to his gold standard.

"It felt like once we're finished shooting this sequence, we as a crew, as creatives, we have now contributed a very significant chapter in the story of one of the greatest characters of our generation," Bauman continued. "It actually felt that way on set, which is incredible."

Bauman added that he "100 percent agrees" with Loki Season 2 executive producer Kevin Wright that the final two episodes are the best of the season.

Loki Season 2's next episode airs this Wednesday, November 1st on Disney+ at 9 PM ET.

The National Wrestling Alliance is experiencing a resurgence. The historic wrestling promotion that once boasted the likes of Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair was considered to be on life support come the 21st century. That was until Billy Corgan swooped in and purchased the company, bringing life into the NWA for the first time in decades. Built around then-NWA Worlds Champion Nick Aldis, the NWA reclaimed its spot on the professional wrestling map, holding quarterly pay-per-view events while also developing storylines on NWA Powerrr, a weekly series produced on YouTube. While the YouTube platform has kept the NWA moving forward, Corgan has been on the lookout for a broadcast television deal.

Recent reports have suggested that that long-awaited NWA TV contract is in fact happening, as rumblings point to The CW being the landing spot for the product.

EC3 Responds to NWA's TV Deal Rumors

The Overman approves.

When asked about the NWA x The CW rumors by ComicBook.com, NWA Worlds Champion EC3 praised NWA owner Billy Corgan's business abilities but emphasized that he is "as in the dark" as everyone else.

"I guess wherever The Overman goes, television deals and national tours follow," EC3 said. "Isn't that cool? No, I know the deal's been in the works for a while and I've been under lock and key because I'm not a stooge to the internet, but I don't know the exact specifics and parameters until we announce anything. I'm as in the dark about the details as everybody else."

The NWA has been linked to a number of networks over the years, but none of the previous rumors had ever come to fruition.

"What I know about Billy Corgan as a shrewd businessman and an entertainment mogul, he was never going to settle for a deal he didn't like," EC3 continued. "He was going to keep his cards close to his chest, so to speak, and play them when it was right, when the right deal would come along with the right network. So sometimes, I don't want to say you take steps back to take steps forward, but you hold the ground until you're ready."

EC3 successfully defended his NWA Worlds Championship against Thom Latimer this past weekend at NWA Samhain in a "No Limits" match.

Stay tuned to ComicBook.com for updates on the NWA's television deal.

Chucky season 3 has surprised fans at a few different points already in the four episodes that have aired, but probably no more so than when Chucky finally got his hands on and killed longtime rival Andy Barclay in brutal fashion. Episode 3 of Chucky's third season revealed a scene where Andy, played once again by original Child's Play star Alex Vincent, is living his life happy and carefree after the events of Chucky season 2. Naturally that happiness doesn't last long as Chucky enters his home, knocks him out, and ties him to the bed. After some taunting, Chucky then brutally kills Andy, stabbing him in the face, chest, and neck, with a level of violence that even the Chucky movies may not have gotten away with in the 1980s. Lucky for fans, it was all just a dream.

ComicBook.com spoke with Chucky creator Don Mancini to talk about the new season, including the Andy "death scene" from Chucky season 3. According to Mancini, this was always just going to be a dream sequence, but one that is especially huge for Chucky's arc throughout the episodes.

"You had to sort of illustrate where Chucky is psychologically when he's riding high, before he can be brought low by the situation that confronts him when he finds out that he's aging. So you know, being like, liberated by Caroline now he's got this kid, after trying so hard to corrupt kids. Even his own, he wasn't successful at leading into into murder. Now again, he's found this kid who's really kind of like his found family. And that on a certain level, that is, often what our show is about is about people and the characters and their various found families."

He continues, "I didn't want to kill Andy for real, but it made total sense that it's something that Chucky would dream about all the time. That's like his favorite dream, and that's what I wanted to show. So the details of it, I sort of like went back to the roots of our franchise. Chucky has a habit of tying people up in their bed. He's done that to Andy before. So I said, let's do that again. And then basically, it was kind of inspired by the opening of Basic Instinct, I mean, without the sex, but I just wanted it to be just as horribly gory and awful as possible just to really have that shock value. And then I knew that I wouldn't lose viewers when I reveal that it's a dream because there's just something so inherently funny about the dissolve to Chucky's face, you know, and he's like the way Brad (Dourif) plays it,.he's like lying on the pillow going it's just, it's just really funny."

Where can I watch Chucky season 3?

New episodes of Chucky season 3 premiere on USA Network and SYFY on Wednesdays at 9 PM ET, with just two more episodes left this year before the show's hiatus begins. New episodes of Chucky season 3 will actually be available to stream the next day after their cable premiere, a major change from the show's first two seasons. Chucky fans that don't have cable can stream Chucky season 3 on Peacock starting on Thursdays after each new episode has premiere. The first two seasons of Chucky can be found on both the Peacock streaming platform, and on Shudder.

Chucky is no stranger to guest stars, but Chucky season 3 had one no one could have expected, My Big Fat Greek Wedding's Nia Vardolos. The fan-favorite writer/actress made her debut in Chucky season 3 episode 4, playing Evelyn Elliot, a fellow death row inmate in Texas living alongside Jennifer Tilly/Tiffany. Nia Vardolos is playing a new character in the scene, a former celebrity chef that is serving a prison sentence after killing her husband and her assistant upon finding they were having an affair. She later baked them into a shepherd's pie for good measure.

Evelyn and Tiffany/Jennifer seem to hit it off at first, but once Evelyn mistakes Jennifer Tilly's work for Meg Tilly and Tiffany/Jennifer confesses to having killed her sister...things change. There's a turn by Evelyn at that point, calling her disgusting for killing her sister and that she'll be cheering when Tiffany/Jennifer Tilly is executed. Jennifer doesn't take kindly to this quick friendship suddenly dissolving, taking a personal item of Evelyn's and using it to make a voodoo doll of her in her cell later that night. As you can imagine, Tiffany/Jennifer does some messed up things to Evelyn, ending with making her stick her face into a deep fat frier, peeling the skin from her bones in a bloody pulp.

ComicBook.com caught up with Chucky creator Don Mancini to talk about the new season and how the My Big Fat Greek Wedding creator even landed on their radar. His reply:

"Our casting director Bonnie Zane, she suggested Nia for this role. So it was Bonnie's idea but I am like a legit fan of 20 some years. Not just as a film goer, but as a writer, and I think a lot of people in Hollywood felt this way about that movie, because I think the success of that was very special because Nia's own story, in a way was reflective of her character Toula's story of like someone coming into their own and, becoming the beautiful swan, and having all this success. And she just seemed so nice. I remember in the 2007-2008 Writers Guild strike, not the one we just survived, but 15 years ago, whatever that was, I remember one time I was picketing, I think it was either Fox or CBS, and she like brought pizza or doughnuts for everybody. And it's just like, oh my gosh, she's so cool."

"Then a year ago, I was at a restaurant with Zach Arthur, who plays Jake, and his family. And Zach was like talking about how much he loves romantic comedies, and just like as an actor, that was a genre that he's kind of interested in, and a lot of people don't know that about him. Then Nia Vardalos walked in. And I was like Zach that woman is actually the the queen of the Rom-Com and I told him the whole story of My Big Fat Greek Wedding and how it's still the highest grossing rom com. She ended up sitting down at a table near us, and we'd like to talk to her a little bit. And this was all like a year before Bonnie, like said, What about Nia Vardalos said, Oh, my God, that's perfect. And you know, it was so great that she wanted to do it, and she said, like, nobody ever asked me to do sh-t like this."

Where is Chucky streaming?

The first two seasons of Chucky are available for streaming on two different platforms, both Peacock and Shudder. All sixteen episodes of the series, including both seasons 1 and 2, can be streamed on each of these services. Unlike previous seasons of Chucky however, wherein the entire season would have to premiere on cable before it began streaming, the new episodes of Chucky season 3 will be available for streaming the next day. After Chucky season 3's episodes air on SYFY and USA Network on Wednesdays, they'll be available to stream the very next day on Peacock.

In Chucky's unending thirst for power, Season 3 now sees Chucky ensconced with the most powerful family in the world - America's First Family, inside the infamous walls of the White House. How did Chucky wind up here? What in God's name does he want? And how can Jake, Devon, and Lexy possibly get to Chucky inside the world's most secure house, all while balancing the pressures of romantic relationships and growing up? Meanwhile, Tiffany faces a looming crisis of her own as the police close in on her for "Jennifer Tilly's" murderous rampage last season.

The cast for Chucky includes Zackary Arthur as Jake Webber, Bjorgvin Arnarson as Devon Lopez, Alyvia Alyn Lind as Lexy Taylor, Barbara Alyn Woods as Michelle Cross, Devon Sawa as the President of the United States, Jennifer Tilly as Tiffany Valentine, Fiona Dourif as Nica, and Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky.

The National Wrestling Alliance has a new flag-bearer. One year after making his debut in the NWA, EC3 defeated Tyrus to become the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion at NWA 75th Anniversary Show. This victory marked EC3's first world title victory for a major promotion since his second reign as TNA World Heavyweight Champion in 2016. Since his victory, EC3 has taken it upon himself to steer the NWA ship so to speak, as he has fully embraced the leadership responsibilities and "face of the company" aspects that come with being NWA Worlds Champion, and his schedule exemplifies it.

Thursday: wrestle for Ohio Valley Wrestling in Louisville, Kentucky. Friday: fly to New York for business. Saturday: defend the NWA Worlds Title in New Jersey. Sunday: defend the NWA Worlds Title against Pat Buck. Monday: fly to Philadelphia to get stem cell treatment.

"I can maybe do less, but I choose to take on more," EC3 told ComicBook.com.

EC3 has always had a grinder's mindset, a one percent mentality if you will, but it's been especially heightened by NWA Samhain.

"It's my first pay-per-view as the champion. It's in my hometown. I need to make sure that building is at full capacity," EC3 said. "I need to make sure that show delivers because my name is on the line. My reputation as champion is on the line. The company is in this upswing, this gigantic ball of momentum we have going partly due to me, but also partly due to the shrewd business moves of [NWA owner] Billy Corgan is rolling down the hill. We have to deliver because we cannot rest. That success can be killer if you just stay with it. Once something happens, you have to keep going forward. For that reason, I don't sleep, and that's okay."

Beyond taking place in his backyard of Cleveland, NWA Samhain is familiar territory for EC3 due to the man challenging him: Thom Latimer.

"Even coming into the NWA, [Thom] was the guy I picked to work with because that's the guy I've seen throughout my career," EC3 said. "From FCW to Impact to NWA. Thom Latimer is one of the absolute best wrestlers in the world, but he doesn't get the notoriety or the credits or the accolades from the internet-based community. Granted, he's had a lot of public mistakes, but he's atoned for them and he's redeemed himself. If you're creating a prototypical professional wrestler, it's going to be Thom Latimer. As a polarity to him, I'm the one that has to beat him."

EC3 and Thom Latimer have faced each other five times before, yet neither man has a true decisive victory over the other. These two have fought to a no contest, time limit draw, and a double disqualification. EC3 got a pinfall victory over Latimer earlier this year, but did so with a low blow.

All of their prior matches pitted Latimer against a dark and sinister version of EC3, the goatee-clad iteration that was bent on getting his opponents to "control their narratives." This time around, Latimer stands opposite a new EC3: The Overman.

"It was a year in the making in my mind," EC3 said of his recent persona shift. "One thing I think is super important, one thing a lot of wrestlers lack, is timing. We lack timing within our matches. We lack timing within our storytelling. If I'm going to make this drastic change, it has to be the right place, the right time, the right moment.

"Right place, right time was NWA 75. This has been inside me for a very long time though. I like the challenge of doing something new and unique. 'Hey, why don't you just be the top one percent again?' Why? I've done that. I'm not the same person as I was five years ago. It's easy to fall into the complacency of the past, cash a check, do business as usual, give the people what they want. My vision and my idea of creativity is that true creativity isn't giving people what they want. It's giving people what they didn't know they needed. I think The Overman's needed."

NWA Samhain goes down on Saturday, October 28th and streams on FITE TV.

Total Nonstop Action is back. As announced by Impact Wrestling President Scott D'Amore at the end of Bound For Glory, the three letters that put Impact Wrestling on the map will be returning in January 2024. In just over two months, Impact Wrestling will officially rebrand back to TNA, migrating the "Impact Wrestling" name back to the title of its weekly television series. This change has been overwhelmingly embraced by fans, as it was the TNA monicker that launched the careers of stars like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, Christopher Daniels, Motor City Machine Guns, Awesome Kong, Gail Kim, and dozens of other top wrestling talents. Beyond the audience approval, the TNA return is over with the wrestling industry itself.

EC3 Praises Impact Wrestling's TNA Rebrand

The Overman approves.

Speaking to ComicBook.com ahead of NWA Samhain, NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion EC3 shared love for his former home reverting back to the letters that made it famous.

"I'm into it. I always thought the name was cool. It's how you started the brand identity," EC3 said. "I think the Impact change was kind of necessary just because so many aspects of the business changed. TNA nostalgia, and I rally against nostalgia quite a bit, it's not that bad. How do fans react to it though? It seemed in the past, TNA took a bunch of flack for no reason."

That flack came in the 2010s when TNA struggled to maintain that brand identity that put it on the map in its early years. TNA started to gain the reputation of being the land of ex-WWE stars, evident by the company's insistence to push established names from elsewhere over its own homegrown talent.

TNA took a turn for the better just before its Impact Wrestling rebrand in 2017, and much of that upwards trajectory can be attributed to EC3 himself. Traces of his former NXT persona were nowhere to be found as EC3 skyrocketed up the ranks, becoming a flag-bearer for the company and eventually its world champion.

"TNA is fun. TNA's cool. TNA is a good name, and I'm glad they're going back to it," EC3 continued. "They waited until the right place in the right time to present this evolution. Revisit the past, but bring something forward into the future is kind of what we do with anything that's really good, entertainment and art."

EC3 defends the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship this Saturday at NWA Samhain against Them Latimer.

Loki director Kasra Farahani revealed his plan for the latest Kang the Conqueror variant. Victor Timely stepped onto the scene in Episode 3 of Season 2. Speaking to ComicBook.com, the director explained how they put the focus on the brilliant inventor headed back to TVA. Farahani talked about working with the writers, producers, and Jonathan Majors to make Timely feel distinct from the other Kang's people have come across in the MCU so far. Here's what he had to sa

"I think the first and foremost goal was to really take advantage of and milk the tension of the mystery around who this Kang variant was going to be," Farahani told ComicBook.com. "We knew that there was going to be a Kang variant and we even knew when and where we could expect to see him. But, what we didn't know is what his nature would be. And so, it was really fun to keep this character shrouded until that last moment where you finally see what he's about and hopefully subvert some expectations."

"Timely was such a fun character to work on and to help build with the other writers, and the other directors, and, of course, Jonathan. You know, he's like this Einstein-like figure. This figure who's brilliant and ahead of his time. He probably had a ton of potential. But, when Miss Minutes and Renslayer dropped this book into his life and his childhood, it just puts him on this crazy trajectory to becoming this super advanced person," he added. "So, like so many of those people, he's operating at a level higher than most people. And we wanted to see that. The charm and quirk and that disarming quality of him combined with his brilliance. But, there's also this level of like a con man in him."

Victor Timely Debuts As A Showman

For all intents and purposes, Timely is a bit of con man in his Episode 3 introduction. While that's not the totality of the character, those elements are definitely played up in Jonathan Majors' performance and the script. However, Farahani was quick to point out that these inventions were indeed legitimate, just hampered by the technology of the time. When speaking to ComicBook.com, it becomes clear that a measure of this clever deception was probably necessary in the environment of 1893 as a Black inventor who was having a hard time being taken seriously by potential investors and colleagues.

"And in my mind, I think of that as coming right out of what it, what the experience of being a black man in the late 19th century in this country probably required, if you're trying to operate at a business level, on an invention level and trying to get into that. You probably had to use your wits a lot and probably had to just be clever on your feet. And also on top of that, the sum of this con," the director added. "These cons come out of the fact that his brilliant ideas, which are bonafide and are truly brilliant. They can't be executed with the primitive technology of 1893. So, he's just like 'They're placeholders until he can get the tech it needs to make this stuff for real.'"

Victor Timely's Real-Life Inspiration

Victor Timely is actually inspired by a real-life inventor named Granville Woods. Farahani spoke to Variety about this revelation last week. Majors reportedly played a big role in helping the writers and the directors figure out what Timely's entire deal would be. Even the beef with Edison is inspired by Woods' own clashes with the famous inventor. While Timely is not Kang the Conqueror, he certainly has some similar traits that have a cause for concern. Check out what the director had to say right now.

"We took a lot of inspiration from a figure that that I had come across and I talked to Jonathan about named Granville Woods," Farahani shared. "He was a Black inventor from the exactly the era Timely would have lived, who invented so many amazing things. He was constantly having his patents challenged by other prominent inventors. Edison tried to claim two of his patents; lost in court both times; ended up offering Woods a job. Woods turned it down."

Loki Heads Towards A Wild Episode 4

Marvel Studios fan-favorite Tom Hiddleston stars in Loki Season 2, returning as the titular God of Mischief for another round of time-traveling hijinx on Disney+ on October 6th. Loki is once again joined by Mobius (Owen Wilson) as the two attempt to keep the timelines intact. After the events of Season 1 saw his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kill He Who Remains and unleash the wrath of Kang the Conqueror upon the Multiverse, Loki must once again embark on an adventure to keep reality from collapsing.

Loki was last seen in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he and Mobius were keeping tabs on one of Kang's mysterious variants. Loki Season 2 will continue the story of the Multiverse Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Have you enjoyed Victor Timely so far? Let us know down in the comments!

Colby Corino holds gold once again. The son of independent legend Steve Corino dethroned fellow second-generation star Kerry Morton to become NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion this past August at NWA 75th Anniversary Show. In the two months since then, Corino has defended the prize all over the country, picking up successful defenses in promotions in states like New Jersey, North Carolina, and Georgia. That momentum takes Corino right into NWA Samhain, an event that marks his first pay-per-view defense of the NWA Junior Heavyweight Championship, and standing opposite him will be the trash-talking Joe Alonzo.

Colby Corino Talks NWA Samhain

"I wish I could say it's just another walk in the park, but that dude's got a bit of a mouth on him," Corino told ComicBook.com. "I'm waiting to see what kind of wild stuff comes out of his mouth. I also know that he has lots of stuff to get under people's skin. He's a big troll, which is something to keep in mind and not let it rattle me when the time comes."

Alonzo represents Corino's first true test as NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion. He has a lot to live up to, as the two most recent reigns following the title's 2022 revival have both eclipsed 200 days.

"I don't have a dream opponent or a dream place to defend per se, but I do want to make sure that my reign means something," Corino said. "I'm not sure if I'll be able to beat Danny Hodge's reign (of 1,361 days). I'm not sure I'll have a multi-year long reign. I hope to, but it's a tough challenge to overcome. I want to make sure I have a reign that means something, that everyone's going to remember for years to come and isn't just forgotten about."

Corino battles Alonzo in a "pillar to post" match at NWA Samhain this Saturday, October 28th. NWA SAMHAIN is available for pay-per-view purchase on FITE TV.

Chucky season 3 spoilers follow! The mid-season finale of Chucky season 3 ended on a cliffhanger, one that no one could have predicted. After losing favor with his voodoo deity Damballa, Chucky is not only losing his power, but he's aging....and dying. Fans of the Chucky movies know good and well that death isn't something new for Chucky to experience, but something about this makes it feel different.

ComicBook.com caught up with Don Mancini ahead of the mid-season finale for Chucky and asked him where this major revelation about Chucky is headed. Could this be him plotting the actual end of Chucky as a franchise? Or is this just the series finding a new story where they write themselves into a corner and then write themselves out of it? In a fitting way though, Mancini revealed that this plot stemmed from other killer doll movies encroaching on Chucky's territory.

"More of the latter I would say," Mancini told us when posed that very question. "I don't want to end Chucky's saga just yet, but I do want to give him new stories, new experiences that are worth telling, different situations that are going to challenge him as the character we've come to know him as. This comes to full flower in the back half of the season, I think part of what the thematic underpinning of season three is about Chucky facing, as a now 35 year old horror icon, who has presided over his little domain of killer dolls and cinnamon entertainment. But now in recent years there are pretenders to the throne or challengers to the throne with M3GAN and Annabelle. So how does Chucky facedown such notions of creeping irrelevance and mortality?"

He continued, "Even with Seed of Chucky, although, that movie didn't do well when it first opened, but it has sort of gotten in time more appreciated, I'm always led by the characters and I just always want to see them deal with things that are perhaps surprisingly identifiable. So this notion of Chucky like having to deal with his own diminishing relevance in the culture. How is he going to react to that?"

Is Chucky really dying in season 3?

Fans of the Chucky franchise, like Chucky himself just did, should take a long look at themselves in the mirror with this question. How many times now have you seen Chucky die? The ending of every movie in the series, from Child's Play (1988) to Cult of Chucky, and even some episodes of the TV show, have wrapped up with Chucky dying. Exploded by an air compressor, chopped up by a giant fan, or even just plain shot in the chest, nothing can stop Chucky. He'll come back. He always comes back.

Where is Chucky streaming?

The first two seasons of Chucky are available for streaming on two different platforms, both Peacock and Shudder. All sixteen episodes of the series, including both seasons 1 and 2, can be streamed on each of these services. Unlike previous seasons of Chucky however, wherein the entire season would have to premiere on cable before it began streaming, the new episodes of Chucky season 3 will be available for streaming the next day. After Chucky season 3's episodes air on SYFY and USA Network on Wednesdays, they'll be available to stream the very next day on Peacock. So starting on Thursday, October 26th, the first four episodes of Chucky season 3 will be streaming on Peacock as well, along with the first two seasons.

Unlike previous seasons, Chucky season 3 has been split into two halves. The first four episodes of Chucky season 3 have arrived in October of this year and the remaining four episodes of the season are scheduled to be released in 2024. As of this writing no official word has been revealed on when the next four episodes of Chucky season 3 will be released, but now we know how far along the show managed to get into its production cycle before things were shut down. ComicBook.com caught up with creator Don Mancini ahead of this week's episode of Chucky, and he offered an update on the release strategy for Chucky season 3, confirming the split in the episodes was a result of the dual strikes in Hollywood.

"It's a necessary experiment born of the strike, yes," Mancini revealed. "We were shooting right up until the point SAG-AFTRA shut everything down. Knowing that it was coming, which really, we didn't know for sure until I think it was just like 10 days before when it was really looking like it was going that way. Universal basically told us, 'Look, Chucky has such a presence for NBC this fall because of the mazes at the parks,' and all that. So they really wanted something to air during Halloween season. So once we saw that the strike was coming, we sort of like put all of our resources and time into finishing the first four. We really have almost finished five and six as well. But we like literally just like a day left to finish five and six. And then a few more weeks to do seven and eight. But we do have pieces of seven and eight already shot as well."

"So, when (the strike) happened, Universal said 'Okay, well, this is what we can do.' And fortuitously enough, the end of episode 4 really did lend itself (to a hiatus), and that was just coincidence, because that was always what was going to happen at the end of episode 4. And we knew that since that was the Halloween episode, as we do every year, we try to make the Halloween episode a little bit special. So it functions as a good cliffhanger because no one has ever seen Chucky in this with this particular dilemma before."

When does the next episode of Chucky come out?

There is no official word on when the next four episodes of Chucky season 3 will be released, and as we know production was nearly finished on episodes 5 & 6. As a result, only once the SAG-AFTRA strike has concluded can production resume on Chucky, with filming then set to begin on the final episodes. The wait for Chucky season 3 episodes will continue even after that point though as post-production will need to take place for the episodes before they can air.

Where is Chucky streaming?

The first two seasons of Chucky are available for streaming on two different platforms, both Peacock and Shudder. All sixteen episodes of the series, including both seasons 1 and 2, can be streamed on each of these services. Unlike previous seasons of Chucky however, wherein the entire season would have to premiere on cable before it began streaming, the new episodes of Chucky season 3 will be available for streaming the next day. After Chucky season 3's episodes air on SYFY and USA Network on Wednesdays, they'll be available to stream the very next day on Peacock.

The spooky movie season has a new face of fear. Prime Video's Totally Killer introduces fans to the Sweet 16 Killer, a mask-clad, knife-wielding murderer who targets a group of four teenage girls around Halloween in 1987, killing three of them over three days in October. The murders were never solved, and the Sweet 16 Killer went dormant for the next four decades. Flash forward to 2023, and that sinister smile returns, targeting the now-grown fourth girl, Pam Hughes (Julie Bowen). Pam's daughter, Jamie (Kiernan Shipka), gets tangled in some time travel shenanigans that brings her back to the original Sweet 16 Killer murders in 1987.

Totally Killer's Judd Overton Details Cinematography Challenges

Speaking to ComicBook.com, Totally Killer cinematographer Judd Overton provided some insight into what horror films of yesteryear influenced this new comedy slasher's style.

"We definitely looked at [Friday the 13th] and Halloween, I think the original Halloween was a big reference," Overton said. "In fact, there's a couple of frames that we pretty highly resembled or almost duplicated. I think the vibe of those 1980s films was exactly what we were going for, something that we could easily slot back into because we bounced around from 2023 back to '87. We wanted to make it really easy for the audience to kind of go on that journey and know which time space that we're in."

As cinematographer, Overton had an especially unique experience on Totally Killer compared to his other projects. Beyond the obvious time period switches, Overton was tasked with shooting the film's crucial, climactic third act sequence on a gravitron.

"I'd never seen anything like it. When I got that on the script, I was like, 'This is going to be incredible,'" Overton said. "You could already tell that that was going to be a set piece that was going to stand out and a really great way to end the film. The logistics on that were pretty extreme. We went through every iteration. It's a small space on these gravitons."

The challenges of transforming an actual gravitron into a film set led to Overton and company questioning if there were alternative options, but budgetary constraints made it clear that they had to take the road less traveled.

"Could we build on a stage and actually have flyaway walls and have all of our rigging points in our lighting dialed in? But that just wasn't in our budget, so we had to go with a real gravitron," Overton continued. "Then we had to kind of do as little as we possibly could because it's actually a pretty technical piece of equipment. Safety is very important to those guys and they get engineers to survey it after every time it's set up."

When it came time to shoot, Overton got creative.

"We weren't really able to change it in any ways, but we were able to remove one of the pieces. We couldn't obviously shoot with it moving that wouldn't work with the cameras," Overton explained. "There's only one place that you can stand, which is in the middle, and we didn't want to shoot the whole sequence from there. That center console is actually really tiny. It's only big enough for the person who's running the machine to fit in there. We had to shoot a bit static.

"We basically created a chase with our lighting. We used LED lighting again. We had to make it look like period lighting. So we got some neon strip, some sort of rubber covers that covered our LED lights and made it look like as if it was a period lighting device. We found some little cracks between the beds so we could throw some light through there. That kind of made it just really feel like it was spinning."

Totally Killer is currently streaming on Prime Video and boasts a certified fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Apple TV+'s gold standard of quality streaming television continues with Invasion. Coming from the mind of Simon Kinberg (X-Men franchise, The Martian) and David Weil (Hunters, Citadel), this big budget series operates as a gritty and realistic rendition of the familiar alien takeover premise, unfolding like an authentic international emergency rather than leaning into the fantastical. As evident by the Invasion Season 1 finale, the aliens' arrival was just the tip of the iceberg. Invasion Season 2 delves further into this post-apocalyptic world, showcasing how humanity is straying even further from the normalcy known before they learned they were not alone in the universe.

Simon Kinberg's Four Season Arc For Invasion

Invasion has only now just reached halftime.

Speaking to ComicBook.com, Invasion creator and producer Simon Kinberg revealed that he has plans for two more seasons of his alien takeover series.

"I do. I did from the beginning," Kinberg said. "I had a four season arc for the show that I was building from the pilot onward. I have a structure for how I see the life of the series. We were working on the scripts, me and the writers' room before the writer strike, and we are working on it on the scripts again now with the hopes that, because the second season was a very successful show for them, we will be back for Season 3."

That "from the beginning" dates to around 2019. Apple TV+ ordered the series in January of that year after it was brought to the table by Kinberg and co-creator David Weil.

"I met with a bunch of writers to co-write it with me, and I met with some really experienced writers, and then I met with David," Kinberg recalled. "He was a much less experienced writer and looked like he was 17 years old, even though he was in his mid-20s. Every writer has a bag of superpowers, and I think his number one superpower is his soulfulness. He is actually just an extraordinarily soulful dude and a really soulful writer. He's obviously really good at telling action stories and all that stuff too, but I do think that the character writing is just stellar with him.

"We built the show together and wrote the first couple episodes together," Kinberg continued. "Then he was less involved in the show. I use him for fresh eyes and ears, quality control on scripts as we develop them. He's a really special talent and he's going to continue to just get bigger and bigger in our business."

Invasion has continued to expand in scope but remains rigid in one key aspect: perspective. Invasion Season 1 introduced fans to four different POVs on the alien takeover: Trevante, Caspar, Mitsuki, and Aneesha. While new characters pop up in Season 2, they serve as auxiliary pieces to the four aforementioned cornerstones.

"The answer is yes," Kinberg responded when asked if he has ideas to introduce completely new perspectives in the Invasion world. "I would love to introduce new characters where they wouldn't just be auxiliary or secondary characters to our leads. They would have their entire own story. For upcoming seasons, I do have an idea, specific idea of a character whose story I would want to tell who has yet to be introduced to the show."

Invasion Season 2 is now streaming in full on Apple TV+.

Andy Weir's critically-acclaimed catalog is making its way back to the big screen. The science fiction author first saw his work go Hollywood in 2015, as director Ridley Scott paired with Matt Damon to bring about a live-action adaptation of The Martian. This project went on to be one of the most commercially and critically successful films of its release year and won enough awards to warrant its own separate Wikipedia page. In the time since The Martian was published, Weir has penned two more science fiction novels: Artemis and Project Hail Mary.

Artemis was once planned for a feature film adaptation, signing directing duo Phil Lord and Christopher Miller to helm the project while The Martian's Simon Kinberg would produce. Five years on, it has yet to come to fruition.

Priorities seem to have shifted towards developing a Project Hail Mary movie instead, as this past May it was announced that Lord and Miller's next live-action venture would be taking on that space-based story. Ryan Gosling is attached to star as Project Hail Mary's lead character Ryland Grace. While Lord and Miller seemingly pivoted from Artemis to Project Hail Mary, they are doing so without Kinberg.

The Martian Producer Simon Kinberg Wanted Project Hail Mary

If he had got his way, Simon Kinberg would be producing another Andy Weir sci-fi epic.

"I love that book and candidly went after that book, but another producer got it," Kinberg told ComicBook.com when asked about his potential involvement in Project Hail Mary. "I know Chris (Miller) and Phil (Lord) who are incredible filmmakers and are great dudes. I know them personally. They're hopefully going to direct that movie and I'm sure it'll be incredible."

Kinberg has a deep-rooted history with Weir, as he produced the author's first feature film adaptation, The Martian, in 2015.

"The Martian is also one of my favorites of anything I've worked on. I loved the book so much," Kinberg continued. "We bought the book or optioned the book when it was an unpublished, almost an unfinished manuscript. It became a bestseller while we were making the movie. It was just a lucky, blessed process. Drew Goddard wrote a perfect script. Obviously, Ridley Scott is the master of science fiction. All the stars aligned on that film."

While his next big screen sci-fi moves remain to be seen, Kinberg has his hands full on the streaming side of things with Invasion, which airs its big Season 2 finale on Wednesday, October 25th on Apple TV+.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians has a new lease on live-action life. Over one decade after its final attempt as a feature film franchise, Disney+ greenlit a serialized adaptation of Rick Riordan's best-selling books. Rather than attempt to squeeze 22 chapters of The Lightning Thief into a movie runtime, Disney+'s Percy Jackson has the luxury of playing with eight episodes of streaming television for each story. Like popular young adult franchises Harry Potter and The Hunger Games before it, Percy Jackson's action-packed endgame has already been written, but the team behind the Disney+ series is in no rush to get to that epic finale.

Disney+'s Percy Jackson Will Be Patient

The House of Mouse is about to kick off a new saga.

Speaking to ComicBook.com at New York Comic Con, Percy Jackson and the Olympians showrunners Dan Shotz and Jonathan E. Steinberg emphasized that Season 1 very much hones in on The Lightning Thief narrative specifically, giving it the power to stand on its own.

"We knew book one would be the first season, so we got to go on this journey of that book and know that we needed to fit it into this box, but we also needed to pace it in a way that made it feel like we were moving," Shotz said. "It's an adventure. It's a ride. It's like a journey across America. We needed to make sure that fit into this box."

"When we took this on, and I think when we first started to get to know Rick and Becky (Riordan), I think the promise was made that a lot of care was going to go into this," Steinberg added. "This wasn't really about just trying to get the book on screen or just trying to get something to market, but it was about trying to really embrace what was special about the experience people had with the books and find a way to translate that. I think everybody from the studios, from 20th to Disney+, to Rick and Becky and our team really embrace that this was going to be something that was cared for."

That care does not mean just being faithful to the source material but giving each of the five installments room to breathe.

One of the many issues fans took with the Logan Lerman-led film adaptations in the early 2010s were that they tried to cram too much into each movie. This was especially apparent in Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013), as that movie expedited multiple significant events from later books far before they were given proper set up.

And while Disney+'s Percy Jackson is prepared to take its time telling its stories, Steinberg noted that he and Shotz made sure that Season 1 plants those later story seeds so they can fully blossom down the line.

"I think part of the job was being aware of setting the table," Steinberg saod. "Making sure that everything was in the right place and that the right actors were in the right places for this to live a long life."

Those seeds are a blend of Easter eggs explicitly stated in The Lightning Thief pages, like Thalia's tree, as well as new nods specifically created for the Disney+ series, such as the early debut of gods Hermes (Lin-Manuel Miranda) and Hephaestus (Timothy Omundson).

"We have the luxury of having now six books to tap into," Dan Shotz said. "We were able to look at things of what we could seed early in the first season. What could we find, characters or gods, that aren't necessarily in the book that we want to pull up? We definitely explored all of that."

Percy Jackson and the Olympians premieres on December 20th on Disney+.

Various stars of the original Harry Potter films have already expressed that they likely won't be involved in the planned reboot of the concept for HBO, allowing the novels to be adapted for a new generation, and now filmmaker David Yates is confirming that he's similarly not interested in such a return, though wishes such a project good luck. Yates directed an impressive four entries into the proper Harry Potter franchise, along with having directed the three Fantastic Beasts films, though admitted his recent foray into directing Pain Hustlers and its more grounded concepts has sparked his excitement in such stories. Pain Hustlers is in select theaters now and hits Netflix on October 27th.

"Do you know what? Honestly, I could not, in any conceivable way, get involved," Yates confirmed to ComicBook.com when asked about getting involved in the Harry Potter reboot. "It's simply: I spent a long time at that school, in those corridors and in those classrooms, and it was an exquisite experience and one I will always treasure. But to go back and do another year or two, for me, I feel I've left it. Being in the back of a van with [producer] Lawrence [Grey] in Atlanta of Savannah, hoofing it to try and make a drama, to me, at the moment, is more compelling than going through the hallowed gates of Hogwarts."

He added, "I wish that show so well, it's gonna be amazing to see them re-explore all it can be for the next generation. I think it'll be a challenge for everyone involved, but it's a very exciting enterprise and I wish it well. It was an amazing experience for me, and I know the other filmmakers who were involved, and it will be for the next generation of filmmakers."

While there's no official timeline for a Harry Potter TV series, the big-screen future of the Wizarding World was originally set to include at least two more Fantastic Beasts films. Due to the trilogy of released films earning underwhelming critical and financial reactions, the Fantastic Beasts franchise has stagnated indefinitely.

In the meantime, fans can check out Yates' work on Pain Hustlers.

The movie is described, "Liza Drake (Emily Blunt) is a blue-collar single mom who has just lost her job and is at the end of her rope. A chance meeting with pharmaceutical sales rep Pete Brenner (Chris Evans) puts her on an upwards trajectory economically but dubious path ethically as she becomes entangled in a dangerous racketeering scheme. Dealing with her increasingly unhinged boss (Andy Garcia), the worsening medical condition of her daughter (Chloe Coleman), and a growing awareness of the devastation the company is causing forces Liza to examine her choices."

Pain Hustlers is in select theaters now and hits Netflix on October 27th. Stay tuned for updates on the future of Harry Potter.

Would you like to see Yates return to the franchise? Let us know in the comments!

Tom Hiddleston first played Loki in Thor back in 2011, and the character has come a long way in those 12 years. Loki is the first Marvel Cinematic Universe series to get a second season on Disney+, and the third episode was just released this week. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to interview costume designer Christine Wada, who created the looks for both seasons of Loki. During the chat, she revealed which costume was the most challenging, and shared some interesting history about the time periods seen on the show. When asked which character was her favorite to dress, Wada had trouble picking, but she did have some kind words to share about Hiddleston.

"I mean, really. It's hard to say because of course Tom's a dream to dress, because he really just knows, he's so in his body. But it's also really fun to dress Sophia [Di Martino] because she's got such an edge to her, and she's such a tomboy. And then Wunmi [Mosaku] has this ... everybody," Wada explained.

Loki Producer Reveals How Tom Hiddleston Impacted Season 2:

Marvel producer Kevin Wright recently told TV Insider that the second season of Loki was directly influenced by the show's star, Tom Hiddleston, who had an insightful way of looking at Loki's journey.

"He's a character who has not lived up to his full potential yet," Wright said when asked about Loki's arc. "And that was the exciting journey for us in Season 2 was we want this Loki to become the best version of himself. And something that Tom would say was like, 'You cannot become the best version of yourself in life until you really embrace your past and who you are, and fully kind of reckon with your being and the things that you've done and what you want to do.'"

What Is Loki Season 2 About?

Marvel Studios fan-favorite Tom Hiddleston stars in Loki Season 2, returning as the titular God of Mischief for another round of time-traveling hijinx on Disney+ on October 6th. Loki is once again joined by Mobius (Owen Wilson) as the two attempt to keep the timelines intact. After the events of Season 1 saw his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kill He Who Remains and unleash the wrath of Kang the Conqueror upon the Multiverse, Loki must once again embark on an adventure to keep reality from collapsing. Loki was last seen in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he and Mobius were keeping tabs on one of Kang's mysterious variants. Loki Season 2 will continue the story of the Multiverse Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

ComicBook.com's podcast Phase Zero will be recording live episodes every week following Loki season 2's new episodes on Disney+. Each week we will review, break down, and discuss the latest installment of the new Marvel series immediately after the episode's conclusion! The new episodes will be broadcast live on the Phase Zero channel on YouTube before being made available on all major podcast platforms. You can subscribe to the Phase Zero channel now and turn on notifications to make sure you don't miss the Loki Season 2 bonus episodes!

What do you think of Loki's second season so far? Tell us in the comments!

Blue Beetle hit theaters this summer, but the DC film had the disadvantage of debuting during the SAG-AFTRA strike, which means the cast was unable to participate in the press tour. Since before the movie was released, director Angel Manuel Soto has been sharing a lot of interesting information and fun content about the project, and now he's doing more interviews in honor of the movie's Blu-ray and DVD releases. While chatting with ComicBook.com, Soto revealed how the cast celebrated the film during the strike.

"We did sneak up on some screenings, you know, and have a little bit of a celebration ... While I was doing some of the traveling, I was able to surprise Belissa Escobedo, she works at a coffee shop in Brooklyn. So we were able to go there and take her out and just have fun. Also, that same trip, I ran into Bruna [Marquezine], so I took Bruna to see the big billboard in Times Square, and all her emotions spilled in the crowd," Soto shared in our interview, which you can view at the top of the page.

"You know, with Xolo [Maridue?a] we hang out all the time. We have become family and with George [Lopez] as well ... It was fun with George ... We ended up going to his stand-up show, and it was amazing going to see that man perform, and see a little bit of [his character] Rudy up there ... He was phenomenal. And going to soccer matches with Xolo has been one of the highlights of this moment as well. But I think at the end of the day, being able to just pop in, surprise fans, and see how much it means to them to see themselves represented like this, and what this could mean for the future of characters like this to keep going in cinema. It's very humbling."

When Will Blue Beetle Return to the DCU?

In a recent appearance on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast, DC Studios head James Gunn referred to Jaime Reyes as the "first hero" in the new DC Universe, teasing that Maridue?a will reprise his role in future projects.

"I mean the first DCU character for sure is Blue Beetle and the first DCU movie is Superman," Gunn said at the time.

While chatting with ComicBook.com, Soto addressed the confirmation that Maridue?a will return as Blue Beetle.

"It was very reassuring to know that it's not just the character of Blue Beetle, it's Xolo being Blue Beetle," Soto explained. "Which means that what we have learned up to this point about his background and his family are part of Jaime Reyes' character. And that is a beautiful thing to see because it's a vote of confidence that what we did, the impact that it did and how it was shown, Whatever they end up doing in the bigger scheme of the DCU, you can always go back to Blue Beetle to know what are the foundations of Jaime Reyes."

Blue Beetle is coming to Blu-ray, DVD, and 4K on October 31st.

The third episode of Loki's second season, "1893," took place in the titular year and saw the main cast of characters attending the iconic Chicago World's Fair. ComicBook.com recently spoke to Loki costume designer Christine Wada, who talked about creating looks for the 1970s in addition to other time periods. In fact, she explained just how complex Ravonna Renslayer's (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) outfit is in the new episode.

"What's interesting is I was looking at all of these [costumes on display] earlier and I was thinking that the season became so difficult to figure out - the colors - because they time travel," Wada explained. "So it was just how could we make them not feel goofy when you also see them in these other eras. So it was like, I think everything kind of becomes tonally really vintage all the way across the board, which is fantastic, and kind of timelessly vintage."

She added while pointing to Renslayer's 1893 costume, "This is pretty fantastic because it's based on a bicycle suit from that era that women ... it's actually culottes. The thing is, it really had a front panel that buttoned on that you could - and this is true to the era - so it had this front panel that buttoned on, so it looked like a skirt and women could then unbutton it and take it off or button it to the side and get on a bicycle. But it became problematic for the action, too, so we just never used the panel."

Christine Wada Explains How She Made Loki Costumes More Comfortable:

During Loki's first season, Wada made headlines for designing Slyvie's (Sophia Di Martino) costume to have easy access for breastfeeding. We asked Wada if she made any special modifications this time around, and she revealed she made detachable sleeves so the actors could be more comfortable between takes.

"Yeah, I think the Temporal Core suit, I definitely feel pretty proud of that engineering feat," Wada shared. "It was like building a spaceship," she added with a laugh. "I think it had similar specifications in terms of actors' needs. I really wanted to make sure they weren't going to get too hot in it. So I designed the sleeves to come off. So between takes, it wasn't having to get them out of the entire suit, which would take a lot of time. So I made it so we could just take off the sleeves. I've made it modular for actor comfortability."

"Those suits get really hot and they're cumbersome, but then to take it all the way off and put it all the way back on is a lot of time for camera to be waiting," Wada added. "So I was trying to figure out the Tetris of that, but also it helped to give the suit volume."

What Is Loki Season 2 About?

Marvel Studios fan-favorite Tom Hiddleston stars in Loki Season 2, returning as the titular God of Mischief for another round of time-traveling hijinx on Disney+ on October 6th. Loki is once again joined by Mobius (Owen Wilson) as the two attempt to keep the timelines intact. After the events of Season 1 saw his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kill He Who Remains and unleash the wrath of Kang the Conqueror upon the Multiverse, Loki must once again embark on an adventure to keep reality from collapsing. Loki was last seen in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he and Mobius were keeping tabs on one of Kang's mysterious variants. Loki Season 2 will continue the story of the Multiverse Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

ComicBook.com's podcast Phase Zero will be recording live episodes every week following Loki season 2's new episodes on Disney+. Each week we will review, break down, and discuss the latest installment of the new Marvel series immediately after the episode's conclusion! The new episodes will be broadcast live on the Phase Zero channel on YouTube before being made available on all major podcast platforms. You can subscribe to the Phase Zero channel now and turn on notifications to make sure you don't miss the Loki Season 2 bonus episodes!

What do you think of Loki's second season so far? Tell us in the comments!

Zelina Vega lights up the ring in WWE every Friday night as the First Lady of The LWO, but Vega has also been making waves in the worlds of video games, cosplay, and anime over the past few years. Now all of those loves are part of Vega's latest project alongside her fellow WWE Superstar and Damage CTRL favorite Dakota Kai, as the two have started a new podcast called Zelvx and Charlie Girl. Every week Vega and Kai discuss everything from anime and gaming to Pokemon, wrestling, and even strategies for a Zombie apocalypse on the show, and ComicBook had the chance to speak to Vega all about the new show, what other WWE superstars might be stopping by in the future, and what she hopes fans take from the show and her story. You can also check out the show's awesome artwork from Melotica.rt below.

Those who have tuned into Vega and Kai's individual Twitch streams in the past know how much they love video games and everything connected to that world, and this new project was simply an evolution of conversations they were already having. "Well, I had known Dakota for a while, and we always just had that in common where we can just get into the locker room and talk about games and what we're playing right now," Vega said. "And then after a while, I was like, 'Man, this is just so easy. Why don't we just do a podcast?' And she was like, 'I think we should.' Then it just evolved from there, and it actually went really quickly."

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"Luckily, we have my friend Josiah, who used to do some work with NXT, and he's the one that's filming everything for us, editing everything for us. We're very, very lucky to have him in that way because we were both not so tech-savvy, but that's how it came about. It was really just finding ourselves talking about it anyway in the locker room and I'm like, why don't we just record this. Let's see if there are other people who can enjoy just weird things that we get into. One of the things that we recently did a deep dive into was Pokemon conspiracy theories and that kind of stuff. So it's just fun to nerd out a little," Vega said.

A recent episode centered around Gaming Icks, where they open up about the gaming world and what isn't so great about it at times. One such preconceived notion in that space that Vega wishes would finally go away is the one about women not being great at video games, though she does see things changing over time.

When I asked what the number one preconceived notion is about gamers, Vega said, "That girls suck. That girls suck at gaming. It's so weird how you can easily be playing without ... She (Dakota) mentioned Call of Duty, but you can easily be playing without talking at all and people will treat you normally and you just go about it. But the second that they hear a female voice, it's like, 'Oh my God, get her out of here. Go back in the kitchen.' It's so stupid."

"But it's one of those things that I feel like, I guess more nowadays that it's becoming less and less, which is good because you have gamers like Valkyrae just killing it," Vega said. "It's cool to see that kind of representation there because now you have all of these younger girls who are like, man, if I really enjoy this too, why can't I do this? Why can't I start a podcast? Why can't I start a Twitch or a YouTube channel?"

"Just something that you can share your love with and find other people that also like it. That's why I like Twitch so much, I saw how many people were just as weird and nerdy as I was and who cared to prank call Rhea at 12 o'clock in the morning. It's weird things that me and Dakota, that we're going to do anyway. It's just like, man, let's let people in to see how weird we really are and see if they end up sticking around," Vega said.

Vega and Kai won't be the only WWE superstars in the mix either, as Vega teased upcoming episodes will be inviting in several fan favorites. "Oh, absolutely. We already have Mia Yim that we're going to bring on the show," Vega said. "We're going to mix it up. Mia's going to come on. We'll probably have Shotzi come on. We'll have Shayna come on, and a few different people there who really have their own relationship with gaming."

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While gaming is obviously a focal point, that is far from the only topic the podcast will discuss. One of the great aspects of geek and pop culture is how much exists in that sphere these days, and Zelvx and Charlie Girl will be jumping into all of it, including streaming, cosplay, anime, and more.

"It's not even just specific to gaming. My thing is obviously gaming, but it's also very much anime, so I think it's cool to bring in things that are still kind of linked together. That's why these conventions like Rock and Shock and the Horror conventions mixed with wrestling. I just feel like music, wrestling, and horror, they all go side by side. The same with cosplay, video games, and anime. I think it's going to be cool to bring in some people, like this girl who I'm absolutely obsessed with, her name is Eleanor, but she goes by Snitchery. She's a cosplayer, and I love her content, so I want to have somebody like her on there to talk cosplaying playing with us too," Vega said.

"So it's going to be a blend of the world, but I also want to try and get Valkyrae on and be like, Hey, talk to us about your gaming journey and what's going on there? So it's also a bit of inspiration, in a way, to show people, hey, this path is possible, and here are the people who've been successful at it. I'm such a big supporter of people being able to know it doesn't matter what you were made fun of in school for. If you can make a living out of it, let's do it," Vega said.

You can check out new episodes of Zelvx and Charlie Girl on the official YouTube page, and you can watch Vega and Kai in action on SmackDown and Monday Night Raw.

What do you want to see Vega and Kai discuss next? Let us know in the comments and as always you can talk all things wrestling with me on Threads @mattaguilarcb!

To many, Will Ospreay is the best wrestler in the world right now. The current IWGP United Kingdom Champion (still recognized as the IWGP United States Championship by NJPW) has put in a career year in 2023. Through ten months, Ospreay has co-headlined NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 17, defeated Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, and competed in front of a record-setting Wembley Stadium crowd at AEW ALL IN: London. While those critically-acclaimed moments are happening, Ospreay is still putting work in on the independent circuit, because as he told ComicBook.com's Liam Crowley in June, that "best in the world" monicker is only validated if "you test yourself in every company's position."

Will Ospreay Discusses His Impact Wrestling Return

The Aerial Assassin is looking to apply that mindset to Impact Wrestling.

This Saturday, Will Ospreay wrestles his first match for Impact Wrestling in seven years. Ospreay made a handful of freelance appearances for the then-TNA in 2016.

"It just wasn't enjoyable. It was a little bit of a weird atmosphere backstage for me personally, but there's no need to harken back on it. We've both grown and matured," Ospreay told ComicBook.com. "I'll just happily hold that grudge for the rest of my life (laughs). No, it wasn't the best time for me. I guess there was lack of communication between the power that be. I was going to New Japan, they didn't think I had anything. It is what it is. I'm happy for Impact now. It's different office, different team and I'm generally looking forward to coming back."

While the current landscape of Impact Wrestling is a bit of unfamiliar territory for Ospreay, his upcoming opponent is far from that. Ospreay is set to take on "Speedball" Mike Bailey at Impact Wrestling: Bound For Glory in what will be their fifth singles encounter.

"He hasn't fully discovered all his little special powers yet," Ospreay said of Bailey. "In this game, you keep playing and you add these extra skill points and powers to your character. He hasn't done that yet but he's this good now. The more that he wrestles, the more that he changes, the more he adapts, the more he improves."

Unlike some of his high-profile contests from earlier this year, Ospreay noted that he feels he's entering a "level playing field" against Bailey.

"I think this is why I'm very fascinated about this match more than the Kenny [Omega] match and the [Chris] Jericho match is because I was chasing in that situation," Ospreay continued. "For the first time, I'm not chasing in these big match scenarios. We're, I think, on a level playing field. We're both entering our prime. I want to see which one of us has learned more and which one of us is willing to go the extra mile."

Ospreay faces Bailey this Saturday, October 21st at Impact Wrestling: Bound For Glory, streaming live on FITE TV.

Hellboy: Web of Wyrd is here, and the new game based on Mike Mignola's comic is surprisingly light on familiar faces. In addition to Hellboy, his "father" Professor Broom is the only familiar face that pops up which readers will recognize. The events of Hellboy: Web of Wyrd are set at a point in the timeline of the character where other characters could appear, they just don't. Speaking in an exclusive interview with ComicBook.com, Upstream Arcade co-founder Adam Langridge revealed that the exact setting for Hellboy: Web of Wyrd was chosen so that they could include Hellboy's pal Abe Sapien in the game in some form. Unfortunately they ended up having to scrap the idea, and their reason is a pretty good one.

"We were in and out regarding whether to get Abe there, and we actually picked a year where technically we could, we couldn't have had Abe in there, but we just realized that for the story we were trying to tell, there wasn't really...Abe came along with almost unkept promises to the player a little bit. It's like, oh, here's a cool, I love Abe, can I play him? So we sort of denied ourselves the pleasure of getting Abe in the game as well, which was quite painful, to be honest. I remember quite a bit of sadness about that."

The specific time frame of Hellboy: Web of Wyrd was also chosen not only for the potential to bring in other characters, but for potential newcomers to Hellboy comics to not have anything spoiled for them about the story. Hellboy: Web of Wyrd takes place in the 1980s, well before the events of the first Hellboy comic storyline, Seed of Desctruction, and with very few hints about where his story goes from there.

"We wanted to introduce (newcomers) to Hellboy in a way that set them up to read on from Seed of Destruction essentially," Langridge said. "So we were very, very careful about not giving away too many spoilers about what happens in the future. There's nothing really about his horns or crown stuff going on. We wanted to be more, almost a bit of an exercise in his earlier days at the BPRD and not hint too much about anything bigger. So it was quite a challenge to try and get that set up as the most, a standalone adventure that could fit into the canon, but doesn't give too much away at the same time. So that's why we sort of try to land there. We thought, oh, that's a good place. We have a cool adventure there. And it's before Seed of Destruction. And still during his fairly high adventure BPRD time before he goes off on his exodus and all the other cool stuff that he does later on.|

Hellboy: Web of Wyrd is available now on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. If you'd like to learn more about this new Hellboy game in the interim, you can check out its official description below.

"Developed by Upstream Arcade, Hellboy: Web of Wyrd is an original story created in partnership with Dark Horse Comics and creator Mike Mignola. Like the comics, the game sends Hellboy on a series of vastly different and wholly unique adventures; and while those stories stand on their own, they are all tied to the mysterious legacy of The Butterfly House.

Built in 1962 by occultist Pasquale Deneveaux, The Butterfly House is more than a mere residence; it's a gateway. Its perverse angles and non-Euclidean geometries were designed with a singular foul purpose in mind: to open doorways into a terrible and fascinating dimension called The Wyrd."

Disney+ is gearing up to tell a familiar story through a brand new medium. Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 1 will chronicle the events of The Lightning Thief, the first of Rick Riordan's pentalogy for the titular character. As emphasized by Riordan, who also serves as an executive producer on the show, Percy Jackson will be completely faithful to the source material. That said, telling this story in serialized television allows it to unfold in a way fans have never seen before. What chapters best serve as cold opens? Will there be flashbacks used during exposition-esque lines of dialogue? How will original scenes integrate into episodes?

Will Percy Jackson Use Post-Credits Scenes?

Speaking to ComicBook.com at New York Comic Con, Percy Jackson and the Olympians director James Bobin admitted that he can neither confirm nor deny whether the upcoming Walker Scobell-led series will utilize post-credits scenes.

"I couldn't possibly say!" Bobin responded when asked about the possibility. "Maybe. No. We may. I don't know. No."

"So we should watch through the credits just in case is what you're saying?" ComicBook.com's Liam Crowley followed up.

"Just in case," Bobin said.

Percy Jackson Moments as Post-Credits Options

As evident by how this storytelling device is used in Marvel Studios or Lucasfilm productions, post-credits scenes are often utilized to introduce new characters.

Knowing that Percy Jackson Season 1 will feature seven Olympian gods, the show could tease their arrivals by attaching a small glimpse within the previous episode's credits. Think of this like the week before "A God Buys Us Cheeseburgers," Ares (Adam Copeland) is seen revving his motorcycle at the conclusion of the previous episode. The same style could be applied for Hades or Zeus before their respective episodes.

Warning - The rest of this article contains spoilers from The Lightning Thief book.

The biggest opportunity to utilize a post-credits scene within Percy Jackson Season 1 would come at the very end of the finale. Percy triumphantly returns to Camp Half-Blood and the credits roll. The screen then cuts back to Percy talking to Luke (Charlie Bushnell) as they sit on a rock sharing a couple of Cokes before the son of Hermes reveals his villainous intent and springs a pit scorpion on the young demigod hero.

Similar to Iron Man (2008), this would allow the season of television itself to stand on its own while also having its "Avengers Initiative" moment at the very end to tease what's to come.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians premieres on Disney+ on December 20th.

Dicks: The Musical is having its wide release this weekend, and it sees Josh Sharp and Aaron Jackson reprising their roles from the off-Broadway show F*cking Identical Twins. Both Sharp and Jackson returned to write the script for the film version, and they star in the project alongside Megan Mullally, Nathan Lane, Megan Thee Stallion, and Bowen Yang. Lane and Mullally play the lead duo's parents, Harris and Evelyn, and they're about as strange and quirky as two characters can get. In fact, Harris has two very bizarre, er, pets at home called the Sewer Boys. These weird little creatures are puppets, and Lane has to do some hilariously odd things with them like spit ham in their mouths. Recently, ComicBook.com interviewed Lane alongside Mullally and he revealed his character's relationship with the Sewer Boys was originally even weirder.

"Originally, their upright Citizens Brigade sketch, that's where this all stems from," Lane explained. "It was a sketch, like a 40-minute sketch they did there called, you'll pardon the expression, F*cking Identical Twins. And the Sewer Boys were referenced in the sketch, and it seemed implied that perhaps it was a relationship of a sexual nature he was having with the Sewer Boys. But then people, the higher-ups felt that was where they were going to draw the line. Harris could not be f*cking the Sewer Boys. I believe that's what it said in the memo. 'No f*cking Sewer Boys.' So it had been discussed whether they would actually be played by humans, human actors, or they would be puppets. And everyone wanted puppets because who would have sex with a puppet?"

He continued, "And then they added diapers and tails. Not formal wear, I mean actual tails. So they were worked by, they were puppeteers and I mean, they didn't do a lot, it wasn't sophisticated puppetry. It was two things on a stick and then went like this," he explained with some simple hand gestures. "It looks so ridiculously fake and yet they're hungry and someone has to feed them. And it was written that he feeds them like a mother bird and he chews ham deli meat. They like deli meat apparently. And I had to spit it into their faces."

You can watch our interview with Nathan Lane and Megan Mullally above.

Dicks: The Musical is now playing in the select theaters, and opens wide on October 20th.

Movie fans typically show their love of horror most in the weeks leading up to Halloween, but devout horror fans can celebrate their love of all things spooky all year long, thanks to streaming service Shudder. One of the ways in which fans can come together is by watching The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, as host Briggs and cohost Diana Prince (a.k.a. "Darcy, The Mail Girl") offer insight into each film shown during an episode, all while fans themselves connect on social media. The weekly series was recently renewed for a Season 6, which includes the upcoming Joe Bob's Helloween special, featuring a surprise double feature of films celebrating All Hallow's Eve. Joe Bob's Helloween will premiere on ShudderTV on Friday, October 20th at 9 p.m. ET.

On The Last Drive-In, Briggs, the world's foremost drive-in movie critic hosts eclectic horror movies, talking about their merits, histories, and significance to genre cinema. Shudder and Briggs first teamed up in July 2018, for the 27-hour marathon intended to be Briggs' final farewell to televised movie hosting. After the special turned out to be an unprecedented hit, Shudder brought The Last Drive-In back as a weekly series and for multiple holiday specials.

ComicBook.com caught up with Briggs to talk about how a horror host celebrates Halloween, his approach to Season 6, and how his connection to the horror community has changed over the decades.

ComicBook.com: For you, someone who's immersed in horror all year round, are you somebody who looks forward to Halloween? Do you get excited in October or does it just mean you've got a busier schedule?

Joe Bob Briggs: I'm always working on Halloween and I used to not think that was a good thing, but then, at some point, I just decided to really embrace it, and so I go to everything. I go to Halloween Horror Nights at Universal and I go to the one at Disney and I go to the one at Knott's Berry Farm. I always find fans of the show at these places, and so I've now become one of those crazy, haunted-house people who has to go to every haunted house. So yeah, I guess I've become ... I used to be just the guy who talked to people about horror and now I'm one of those crazy horror fans myself.

Now that we're gearing up for a new season of The Last Drive-In, we have new episodes, when you approach a new season, do you aim to set a new season apart from what came before it or is it almost more of a goal of trying to create a uniform experience from start to finish?

Well, the uniform part of it is just the format, but I don't like to repeat ourselves. We could make people very happy just by showing obscure, '80s slashers all the time, but we're trying to show every subgenre of horror in the history of the world. That means we have to occasionally test the patience of our audience. And so far, our audience has been willing to go with us wherever we go.

The most brutal thing that we did, we had VHS Night, those movies from the '80s that were just shot straight on VHS and then somehow got into the video stores. We actually awarded Ironman certificates for anybody who could get through that night and write coherent plot synopses of both movies. We had to send out about 800 of those because people actually sent them in and were really serious about it. Some people wrote 30 pages to get their Ironman certificate. Actually, I've had people say, "Hey, you ever going to do VHS Night again?" Normally my answer would be, "No, we're not," but if enough people want to do that again, I mean, we might do it again. But that was one that's way off the radar of most people.

Then we did a Nosferatu double feature on the 100th anniversary of Nosferatu. Normally, if you're a programmer, you say, "Don't make people read subtitles, don't show silent films, don't show black-and-white stuff. These are all the rules of television. You don't do this. Don't show weird artsy foreign films." So we showed Nosferatu with the original score and we showed the Werner Herzog remake of Nosferatu, which is the exact same movie made in 1979 with sound, but it is in German. And well, lo and behold, people stayed with us throughout the entire evening and got deep into the history of the original. He's not the original vampire, but we think of him as the original vampire. So that was another one where, normally, if you were at a programming meeting, you would say, "No, don't do that. Everyone's going to surf out in the first 20 minutes." But everyone stayed with us.

I want to do more programming like that, where we say, "We're going on a journey tonight. And it may not be what you expect, but when it's over, you're going to thank us." So that's our philosophy of programming, and then, occasionally, we just show, "This is party night. This is a brainless party movie." We do those, too.

You bring up a good point. You say that you don't want to just repeat yourselves and sometimes you almost test the patience of the audience with movies that maybe they wouldn't sit through otherwise. And you might be surprised to hear this, but some horror fans can get a bit cranky online, shocking as it may sound. But I know some people, when you show The Babadook or when you show Possession or something, that some people say, "These aren't drive-in movies. What the hell are you doing?"

Oh, but they are drive-in movies and they are horror movies. They don't have a very expansive definition of the word "horror" or the word "drive-in." Ingmar Bergman's Cries and Whispers played drive-ins in the '70s, so there's a lot of things you can show at a drive-in and there's a lot of things that qualify as horror.

But, usually, when we get those complaints, that's people -- that's the '80s, slasher guys, and that's what they want and they don't want to veer off too far from that. I don't want to say they're all stoners, but they're watching the show under the influence of something and they can't go into the deep, deep, deep dives, they can't follow the deep, deep, deep dives, that we're going deep on the more complicated movies. A lot of people take a lot of substances while they're watching the show and so we might lose them in the second movie.

I guess it sounds like, the fans who have a limited perception of what a drive-in movie or what a horror movie is, one, they should maybe work on expanding their horizons, and two, also trust that even if there's one movie they don't like, that they should stick around because the next week's episode might be more up their alley?

Yeah. There's two things going on here. One is people will say to me, "Hey, my favorite movie is X and I've watched it 50 times. Why have you never had it on the show?" Well, why would they want me to have it on the show? They've already seen it 50 times. They already know what they think about it, and so they want us to weigh in on movies that they love and they're waiting around for the movie that they love to show up on the schedule. And here we are, we're showing a Polish art film, Possession, and they say, "Well, this is not horror and this is not what I'm sitting here waiting for." But it is, it is. Boy, it is serious horror. So that's one thing that's going on.

Then I meet all these fans, I meet them at the conventions, and we have everything from bikers who have more tattoos than you would think anyone could get in their lifetime to people that live in the suburbs and bring their three babies with them to the convention and everything in between. So all the subgenres of horror have an audience and we satisfy all those audiences, but we ask them to cross over. We ask them to watch really strange things like The Baby. I don't know if you've watched The Baby, the night we showed that.

But a lot of people said, "This is a very disturbing movie. How did this get past the rating board in 1972 or whenever that was?" And people wouldn't choose to sit down and spend their Friday night with their family watching The Baby. But when they do, when they're asked to do it by us, they go along with it, and then there's this "wow" reaction. It's like, "Whoa, I never would've known that that existed in the universe if we hadn't seen it on The Last Drive-In."

That's the reaction we want. That's what we want to do. We want to bring things to people that they wouldn't find on their own. We know, I mean, it's a little bit arrogant of us, but we're saying, "This is not a movie you want to see, but it's a movie you need to see and after you see it, you will want to see it again." It's the arrogance of a curator, I guess you could say.

Being a horror host, being in the horror community for decades now, I wondered what changes you have noticed in the horror-fan community, either horror at large or horror fans who like MonsterVision and Last Drive-In? Then, on the other side of that, how dp you feel you have changed in those years? How has working with Darcy and the perspective that she brings, how do you feel like you have changed over the years?

Well, you've hit on two very important things. The main thing that's changed since I started is the fan base has become more and more female. When I started, the horror fan base was probably 80% male. Today it's probably 50/50, and women have changed the nature of horror. The female audience has changed the nature of what films get made and how they're made, and so that's one big change.

Then you mentioned Darcy. I wish you could see some of the testimonials that people do to Darcy when they come up to the signing table. People don't expect the Mail Girl to be an icon and role model of third-wave feminism, but that's what she is. People are always saying, "Oh, I admire you so much," and she's become a big deal in the horror community. She has a very different standard of what she likes in horror than I do, but I think that's why we work together so well, is she can tell me things.

She's one of those people that can go through all the franchises and tell you, "Well, number three and number six are good. Number eight sucks." I can't do that. I can't remember the difference between Friday the 13th 2 and Friday the 13th 4, mainly because I watched them in the theaters. I watched them two years apart, or one year apart, but people who have binge-watched these franchises like Darcy, they really know their stuff, and so she's the one who'll say, "Oh no, don't show Part 2, show Part 3, that's the one everyone wants to see."

What's changed with me is, for years I was just sending out articles and books and TV shows into a void and I didn't know who was watching. And then something happened in the internet era while I was off doing other stuff that created this cohesive community of horror lovers who are like no other audience that I've ever addressed. They are loyal and vigorous in their enthusiasm. You don't have that -- there's not an action movie audience like that, there's not a drama audience like that. The closest thing to it might be a Lifetime movie audience. But you know what? Most Lifetime movies are horror. Most Lifetime movies are psychological horror, and so it's the same audience.

So the biggest change, for me, is being close to the audience and knowing what they think and getting that real-time reaction, and that's wonderful for a guy who's basically a writer, which means you're lonely all the time, you're working in a room with a blank wall and a computer. It's great. It's great to have all these friends, so that's been the biggest change for me.

Joe Bob's Helloween will premiere on ShudderTV on Friday, October 20th at 9 p.m. ET.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.

Rick Riordan has entrusted his world of demigods and monsters to a select few filmmakers. Percy Jackson and the Olympians kicks off under the leadership of director James Bobin (Alice Through the Looking Glass, The Mysterious Benedict Society). Bobin was one of the first talents to sign onto Disney+'s serialized reboot of Percy Jackson, as reports surfaced back in October 2021 that he was attached to direct. Beyond his directing responsibilities, Bobin also serves as an executive producer on the show, meaning he directly collaborated with later episode directors Anders Engstr?m and Jet Wilkinson.

Percy Jackson's James Bobin Discusses Season 1

While Percy Jackson's fictionalized world knows the big three to be Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, the show's behind-the-scenes crew recognizes the directing trio of James Bobin, Anders Engstr?m and Jet Wilkinson. Bobin was tasked with setting the tone in the first two episodes before he passed the baton to Engstr?m and Wilkinson for the remaining six episodes.

Speaking to ComicBook.com's Liam Crowley at New York Comic Con, Bobin noted that switching seats with his fellow directors was a smooth shift.

"[It was] fantastic. I basically did the first two, and as the pilot director, you cast the show, you design the show and you set it rolling," Bobin said. "Both Anders and Jett are fantastic directors and they work so brilliantly with the cast. The most important thing is that the cast stays the same. It's continuity of cast and they did a brilliant job and their episodes also look beautiful. They did a great job."

Disney+'s Percy Jackson promises to be a largely faithful adaptation of Riordan's first book in the series, The Lightning Thief, which was exemplified in the three exclusive clips shown at NYCC. That said, Bobin only got to play with a handful of the franchise's characters, as notable roles like Ares, Hades, and Poseidon don't show up until the final chapters.

"I enjoy Jay [Duplass] very much as Hades," Bobin said when asked which performances stuck out to him when watching later episodes as an EP. "That's really fun. The tone kind of carries on naturally by itself to a degree because the actors know what they're doing. The main principles know what they're doing. So these guys come in like Jay, or obviously Lance [Reddick as Zeus] is incredible, and they kind of fit into that world. It's really fun to see Anders do that and Jet do that. It's really fun."

Beyond producing admirable work, Bobin added that it was an enjoyable experience collaborating with Engstr?m and Wilkinson.

"It's fun working with other directors. It's quite a lonely job being a director because you don't get to meet directors very often," Bobin continued. "So doing a show with by you get to collaborate with other people who are super talented is very helpful."

Bringing multiple directors in for a season of television is a recurring Disney+ strategy. Projects like The Mandalorian and Andor have enlisted multiple filmmakers for their inaugural seasons, leading to critical acclaim and overwhelming praise from fans. The collaborative process would then be chronicled in Disney Gallery, an anthology roundtable series that featured the various directors discussing their work.

"Maybe. That'd be fun," Bobin responded when asked if the Percy Jackson directors could partake in a future Disney Gallery roundtable. "Yeah, they're great and they're good talkers."

Percy Jackson and the Olympians premieres on Disney+ on December 20th.

Filmmaker Franck Khalfoun is no stranger to delivering audiences stories that are contained in constricted scenarios. While a film like P2 largely focused on specific levels of a parking structure, his interpretation of Maniac saw a majorirt of the film restricted to the point of view of the film's killer. His latest film, Night of the Hunted, could be his most restricted setting yet. A reimagining of the Spanish film Night of the Rat, the film is almost entirely contained to one gas station, which amplifies the tension but also presents some production challenges. Night of the Hunted lands on Shudder on October 20th.

Night of the Hunted is described, "When an unsuspecting woman (Camilla Rowe) stops at a remote gas station in the dead of night, she's made the plaything of a sociopathic sniper with a secret vendetta. To survive she must not only dodge his bullets and fight for her life, but also figure out who wants her dead and why..."

ComicBook.com caught up with Khalfoun to talk developing the film, the challenges of the production, and more.

ComicBook.com: First thing that I was curious, and this might be a super short yes-or-no answer, but just the title alone, Night of the Hunted, obviously a flip on the famous Robert Mitchum movie The Night of the Hunter. Was that at all an intentional, thematic mirroring or was it just a good name for a movie?

Franck Khalfoun: I didn't come up with the name of the movie, and it never bothered anybody. It was like, "Yeah, it's the Night of the Hunted." After having made the movie, I'm like, "It's a little bit more ... It's a little more cerebral, I think, of a film." There's a lot of things going on in there that are intellectualized or that there's a real debate and real arguments. I felt, later on, that perhaps there was a name, maybe, that was a little more representative of that. But it was there, and it never bothered anybody, and we fell in love, I guess we fell in love, we just never changed, but it was presented to us, I guess.

The original film, the Spanish film that this is based on, because it's really the concept of being pinned down by a sniper in a gas station, was Night of the Rat, the Spanish film, which had no dialogue. I don't know if you saw that one, but that one was zero dialogue, right? And so the Night of the Rat, I don't know if it translated really well, especially with Camilla being so gorgeous, but at the same time, she's not a great person either. We're not sure where she comes from.

So no, I don't know. The title, it was just there, and we never bothered to take it off. Now I'm looking at the Night of the Hunted, the French film, too, and there's a lot of things about that, and so I'm not sure people will look for Night of the Hunted and see that one and go, "Well, this is weird." But no, I think it's fine. Neither a yes or no, actually. Neither yes or no.

What was it about the idea, in general, that really excited you? Was it your connection to the source material? Was it the constrictions of the contained setting? Was it the political and cultural themes that it was exploring?

Well, I'll have to tell you, it was a simple concept, which I'm always down for. And then the writer who adapted and made it an American film, or film with dialogue, Glen Freyer, wrote about a psychopath who was chasing this woman down. There was one line in particular, which I really loved, which was he said that, "The future generations will inherit my ability to not give a f-ck." I thought that was really profound and really scary and that's the one sentence, to me, which says, "Oh wow, there's something really interesting about this notion that we are losing our ability to have empathy, which explains why we have so many killings and why the world is blowing up now as it is."

But that was really one of the only things in there, and I took that script and all these things that you're talking about, all of the current event things, all the political or socioeconomic things that she deals with or that they talk about, it's what I brought to the film. I started layering it with -- trying to layer it with concepts or ideas that we're all grappling with today and tried to introduce it into the film and having discussions about American society, because of the guns, but also the world as a whole. So I saw the potential in the film of making a social commentary about the condition of the world today, of humanity.

That's what appealed to me, to the film, that and the challenge of making a film in one location and making it suspenseful. That's really difficult. I thought it needed another layer because ... The balance was scares, fears, escape, physical, and then an emotional grappling and cat and mouse. It's both a physical cat-and-mouse and an emotional cat-and-mouse, so that's what appealed to me. Could I elevate the genre in a way to talk about things that we're all dealing with so that it's entertaining on multiple levels?

I was really intrigued by just the concept of designing the convenience store itself. Obviously there are certain moments in the script where you have to have Camilla in certain places and discover certain things, but when it came to actually designing the set, designing the location, were there discoveries of, "Oh, and if we put this bag of chips here, we can have this integration here,"? How specific was the design of the actual set?

The set, we found an old gas station, which was a garage, which had been turned into a diner with the pumps. I came in, I said, "Oh, let's get rid of everything," because I could control the space, and I can make it whatever I want. So I designed where everything was in the store based off of what we're all used to seeing when we go to gas stations somewhere in the middle of the country or wherever. I did a floor plan and designed the action around the floor plan.

At the same time, we discovered things to do once that was established. You can't pick everything and know how ... You're going to run into problems, certainly, with every design. "Oh, where did this go?" So I had general idea of where she was going to hide, the billboard across the way, and what the angles were going to be. Then you discover certain things. At one point, they throw batteries against the broom to get the broom so she can get the broom, and she can grab the walkie. Those things were done right there. They're like, "Oh, my God, how do we get out of this situation? We're stuck. How do we get out and not get shot?" And so I came up with that right there and then.

Then the batteries, those were written. That was a moment that was written in the script, and so that part was written. Then the umbrellas, "Oh, we know we were going to do umbrellas. Where are they going to be?" So everything had to be composed and fit like a puzzle. "This action's going to happen here. This action's going to happen here." And, at the same time, hopefully, we're going to be able to have the right angles that we want. That was the physical, the narrative puzzle that we had to figure out on that one. It's exciting. It has one location. It's pretty hard to just maintain the attention and thrills and suspense in one place, but I think everybody did a great job.

Your work on P2, that is similar, a relatively limited location that you're working with, but with a parking garage, you can shoot it from a bunch of different angles and make it seem smaller or bigger. With this one convenience store, what did you find to be the biggest challenge of such a restricted setting?

Well, when I got there, I go, "Wow, my next movie's going to be in a closet because you keep getting smaller and smaller." It's the constraints of where to put the camera in a space like that and what angles, how many ... If you look at the movie, there isn't a single angle that repeats itself. It's always a different shot, and you have to maintain the audience's interest. If I kept everything from two angles, it'd be boring, right?

So, how do you take each scene? I basically broke down the script and made sure that it evolved with each scene, and that each scene was in itself its own little section, its own little chapter, its own little design, and that each little section, each little chapter of our little story was filmed in a different way. I was pretty sure that if I stayed true to it and made sure that I didn't repeat myself, that we'd be able to maintain suspense and the audience's attention. You mix that with the dialogue, which shifts and changes, and you balance your action with your dialogue, and I think it works. I think it works. I was pleased with it. I'm proud of the film.

You brought up Camilla, what was it about her that really let you know that she would be the right person that could handle the physical and emotional requirements of this movie? And also, what did she bring that you didn't expect until you got to set, and she transformed that character?

Well, she's compelling, all the movies I've seen her ... Somebody mentioned her, and it was very compelling. I was like, "Well, she's small and she is frail," and so I was able to convince myself that, well, that's what you want. You want somebody frail to then become heroic and to step outside of herself and so that the arc is really well-defined.

Emotionally, she's very intuitive. She's very smart. She had emotion. I mean, you could see it, that she's able to convey it, and she takes her time. I saw some movies, one of her earlier films where she plays a young prostitute who deals with having a child, and I saw the emotion in her. I saw that really, she really could bring that.

Physically, I was less certain, and she really suffered, and it shows. I mean, I felt something. There's a moment where she gets shot, one of the moments where she gets shot, where she's in pain and she's screaming and she's crawling on the floor and it's very hard to -- it's physical. Now, she's a little model, European model, and so this is really outside of her wheelhouse, but, man, she really took it and made it her own. I think you combine that, you combine that struggling with her emotional range, and I thought, "Wow, she's really going to be able to do this."

Then when I started talking with her, the surprise, the thing that I didn't expect, which is the last part of your question, was she brought dialogue and she was intellectually involved. She understood where I was going with all the concepts, the ideas, and the subject matter, and she brought things to the table. She wrote things. She improvised, and she took the script and the character to the next level.

There was a moment when she's talking about abortions, and she's talking about having the right, and she goes, "And it's my choice." We shot that the night that the Supreme Court had reversed Roe v. Wade, and she came in crying. She was emotionally invested in what was going on in the world and she understood the power of the words that we were trying to convey. She inhabited them, and she made them her own.

She's powerful. When she comes out of the gas station and confronts him finally, and he doesn't shoot, and she's out there, and she goes, "It's my choice. And it's the choice your mother would've made had she known what you'd become," it's so intensely powerful. A big part of that was the dialogue worked with her. That was the big surprise and the pleasant surprise. She's very, very intelligent and really has great range emotionally, and I was very, very happy to have her do the movie.

One more thing I have got to get in, is I'm a really big fan and big supporter of your Maniac. That, honestly, it is one of my favorite horror reboots, the way that you explored new perspectives on such a beloved, disgusting story.

That was a big challenge because I knew that there was going to be some serious backlash.

I fully support what you did and what you accomplished with that movie, and Elijah [Wood]'s so great. Do you think that scratched your itch of doing a reboot or doing a remake, or do you think there is another movie out there that you would really love to similarly put a new perspective on and reimagine in a way that horror fans might not be expecting?

It's so funny because you don't want to remake the movies you love. You have to find movies you don't love that have good ideas, and usually you don't go out searching for those. So it's strange. No, I don't know that I do, that I have one in particular that I'd like to remake. I must have thought of a few. Somebody came to me a couple days ago, and [said], "Dead Calm. Let's redo Dead Calm." I go, "It's perfect. Why do you want to redo perfect movies and the thriller vibe?" But I think everything gets redone, rewritten all the time. I'm not against that.

What I want to do, and what I tried to do with Maniac, is expose a new generation to ideas that we've all loved, and pay homage. I loved the movie, I loved the original Maniac, and I didn't want to remake that movie. I wanted to make another movie that captivated the seediness of it and the heart of it without remaking it. I really struggled and I really fought with the original script. It wasn't a perspective film of Maniac, a point of view. I said, "What are we going to do? Are we going to redo another serial-killer movie? Let's do something that's completely out of the box and completely different." I think, for that, the fans of the genre and of that movie will be forgiving.

I think it worked. I think it worked because everybody's going, "Elijah Wood?" and I'm like, "No, but there's the creepy guy next door, which is very, very connective." I always kept thinking when I was doing that movie, like every serial killer that gets caught? All the neighbors are always going, "He seemed like such a normal guy. He seemed like such a nice guy." That's terrifying to me. That's the real boogeyman.

If you were walking down the street in the '80s, and you saw [original Maniac star] Joe Spinell walking towards you, you probably would across the street. Whereas Elijah, you might be a little less defensive.

Well, if Joe Spinell came up to you, you'd be defensive, and if Ted Bundy came up to you, you'd probably go on a date with him. So that's really terrifying. That's always stuck with me, because I meet a guy ... I'm a child of the '80s when all those things were happening. Maniac was a little bit early for me, but I did get those serial killers that were the normal people, the normal people that we never would expected, and that always stuck with me in terms of the people I put in movies, the characters.

Night of the Hunted hits Shudder on October 20th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.

Another professional wrestling story is coming to the big screen. Following previous major motion-picture wrestling stories like The Wrestler and Fighting With My Family, A24 is bringing The Iron Claw to theaters this December. Chronicling the tragic tale of the Von Erich family, The Iron Claw brings top Hollywood talent like Zac Efron (Kevin Von Erich) and Jeremy Allen White (Kerry Von Erich) with real-life wrestlers including AEW World Champion Maxwell Jacob Friedman (Lance Von Erich) and Chavo Guerrero Jr. (The Sheik). The cast of characters goes beyond the Von Erich family specifically, as major names from that time period in wrestling like Harley Race and Ric Flair will be portrayed by Kevin Anton and Aaron Dean Eisenberg, respectively.

Ric Flair Responds to The Iron Claw

The Nature Boy is looking forward to the world understanding the Von Erichs' story.

Speaking to ComicBook.com at New York Comic Con while promoting his upcoming eBay collectible items, Ric Flair is hoping The Iron Claw does justice to the tragedy that struck the Von Erich family.

"I'm happy they're finally doing it," Flair said. "I think it's like 20 years too late because a lot of people don't, unless you understand wrestling, don't remember who the Von Erichs were. It was a tragic thing. Myself and The [Fabulous] Freebirds were there for the whole thing. I hope it comes out and reflects on just how tragic it was."

As the 16-time world champion alludes to, Flair was an active competitor in and around the territories while the Von Erichs were at their heights. Flair's relationship with the Von Erichs will be on display in The Iron Claw as he is set to be played by actor Aaron Dean Eisenberg.

"I never did," Flair said when asked if he got the chance to meet Eisenberg. "They wanted me to fly out to Dallas, but I never had an opportunity to. I was traveling a lot at the time."

Flair has had a busy past calendar year. The WWE Hall of Famer stepped back into the ring in Summer 2022 for Ric Flair's Last Match, a pay-per-view headlined by his final in-ring bout alongside son-in-law Andrade El Idolo. Since then, Flair has taken to the road for a number of convention appearances and interview opportunities.

The Iron Claw hits theaters on December 22nd.

We're two episodes into Loki's sophomore season, and it is already bringing a distinct flair to the tapestry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The season's second episode definitely delivered on that front, with long sequences set in the 1970s -- where Hunter X-5 / Brad Wolfe (Rafael Casal) is starring in a Zaniac! movie -- and 1980s -- where Sylvie (Sophia di Martino) has started a new life as a McDonald's employee. One thing that caught fans' attention was the visual approach to those sequences, and according to Loki director Dan Deleeuw, it was brought to life in a unique way. While speaking to ComicBook.com, Deleeuw spoke about the thought process behind these sequences, as well as the film grain that added a distinct sheen to the '70s and '80s sequences.

"Across the entire episode, we put film grain on it," Deleeuw explained. "So, that gave it -- not a patina per se, but when you went back in different time periods, it helps seat that and it made it more believable. I think the palette was incredibly important with McDonald's, because you started getting into the more vibrant eighties colors, in contrast to the more muted colors in the seventies. And then it was just having fun and designing the seventies, finding a reason that the punks and the mods would be together, finding just the right year, the mods, kind of coming back a little bit with the jam and then Quadrophenia coming out a couple years later. So you're thinking about all that stuff. It's the fun part of the puzzle, putting that together."

Why Is McDonalds in Loki Season 2?

In a recent interview with Fast Company, Loki producer Kevin Wright spoke about the decision to set part of Season 2 at the 1980s McDonalds, and about the feeling of nostalgia he hopes it inspires.

"This character had been on a decades-long, maybe centuries-long revenge mission, and the classic trope of those stories is that it's all-consuming and she's not thinking about what comes next. Now she has this moment of opportunity, where is she going to go?" Wright explained. "When we stayed in the view of character, this woman who went on the run as a child, had been running through time, a fugitive of time, living in apocalypses, never being able to relax or slow down, the novelty of walking into a 1980s McDonald's looked appealing. You play a Little League game and go to McDonald's. You go to a kid's birthday party at McDonald's. Someone like Sylvie would never have experienced that, and would be really taken by that."

"I was worried that McDonald's would think we wanted to do something ironic or make fun of them," Wright continued. "But we were selling an earnest story, a love letter to nostalgia through a character's eyes who will see all of the novelty and joy of it."

What Is Loki Season 2 About?

Marvel Studios fan-favorite Tom Hiddleston stars in Loki Season 2, returning as the titular God of Mischief for another round of time-traveling hijinx on Disney+ on October 5th. Loki is once again joined by Mobius (Owen Wilson) as the two attempt to keep the timelines intact. After the events of Season 1 saw his variant Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino) kill He Who Remains and unleash the wrath of Kang the Conqueror upon the Multiverse, Loki must once again embark on an adventure to keep reality from collapsing. Loki was last seen in the post-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, where he and Mobius were keeping tabs on one of Kang's mysterious variants. Loki Season 2 will continue the story of the Multiverse Saga in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

ComicBook.com's podcast Phase Zero will be recording live episodes every week following Loki season 2's new episodes on Disney+. Each week we will review, breakdown, and discuss the latest installment of the new Marvel series immediately after the episode's conclusion! The new episodes will be broadcast live on the Phase Zero channel on YouTube before being made available on all major podcast platforms. Phase Zero will begin its 5-minute timer to start the live show at 9:45pm ET on Thursday, October 5. You can subscribe to the Phase Zero channel now and turn on notifications to make sure you don't miss the Loki Season 2 bonus episodes!

If you haven't signed up for Disney+ yet, you can try it out here.

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The season premiere of WWE SmackDown seemingly served as an early teaser trailer For WWE WrestleMania 40. The blue brand broadcast featured two brief, silent standoffs: Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Roman Reigns standing opposite Cody Rhodes and top prospect Jade Cargill confronting the most decorated women's champion of all-time, Charlotte Flair. While Reigns and Rhodes would be a rematch, Jade vs. Charlotte is a first-time-ever bout that fans have dreamt of for years. Charlotte and Jade have shown respect to one another on social media when they were in separate companies, but now that they share a locker room, it appears that it will be all business moving forward.

Ric Flair Responds to Charlotte's Stand-Off With Jade Cargill

Speaking to ComicBook.com at New York Comic Con while promoting his upcoming eBay collectible items, WWE Hall of Famer Ric Flair weighed in on daughter Charlotte Flair's recent confrontation with Jade Cargill on WWE SmackDown.

"Anything she does is money. If I give you my thoughts on it, she'll get mad because she doesn't like me talking about it. But I mean, you heard the crowd," Flair said. "Sometimes, it's meant to happen. I don't know whether Jade is gonna spend some time at NXT or not. I'm not sure. As a father's standpoint, as a wrestling fan, Jade don't want nothing to do with The Queen."

As Flair alluded to, Jade's permanent home within WWE is uncertain. She has made three televised appearances now, showing face at WWE Fastlane, WWE NXT, and now WWE SmackDown. Early reports indicated that she would call Monday Night Raw home, but recent television points to any of WWE's three brands being a possibility.

If Jade vs. Charlotte were to go down at WWE WrestleMania 40 in April, it's unclear as to if it would be a standard singles bout or a title match. Neither woman is a champion right now, but Charlotte is always an arm's length away from gold. The Queen has held a women's title on the main roster 13 times and has two NXT Women's Championship reigns to boot. If her black and gold title reigns are counted towards her overall world title count, that makes Charlotte a 15-time champion, one reign shy of tying her father's record.

"I know," Flair responded when ComicBook.com's Liam Crowley noted that Charlotte is coming for that record-breaking 17 title wins. "She hates me saying it, but it's the greatest thing the company could do."

News emerged late last year that The Keep, the novel by F. Paul Wilson, was set to get a reboot from filmmaker Greg Nicotero, though no substantial updates on the project have emerged since. Nicotero recently confirmed that fans haven't heard any updates because the project was delayed due to the writers' strike, though also admitted that, with the strike resolved, he hopes to be moving forward on the project in the near future. Given that the actors' strike is still ongoing, it's unclear when production could begin. In the meantime, fans can see Nicotero's Creepshow Season 4, which premiered on Shudder, AMC+, and AMC on October 13th.

"Unfortunately, we got hit with the writers' strike right around the time we were starting to pitch that. We have a really, really great take with a really great writer. We're ready to go back out with that," Nicotero revealed to ComicBook.com.

Wilson's website describes the story, "'Something is murdering my men.' Thus reads the message received from a Nazi commander stationed in a small castle high in the remote Transylvanian Alps. Invisible and silent, the enemy selects one victim per night, leaving the bloodless and mutilated corpses behind to terrify its future victims. When an elite SS extermination squad is dispatched to solve the problem, the men find something that's both powerful and terrifying. Panicked, the Nazis bring in a local expert on folklore -- who just happens to be Jewish -- to shed some light on the mysterious happenings. And unbeknownst to anyone, there is another visitor on his way -- a man who awoke from a nightmare and immediately set out to meet his destiny."

Nicotero added, "It's interesting, because the few people that I've talked to about the project, a lot of people don't realize that The Keep was one of the first -- the Nazi bad guys get their comeuppance because they come into contact with a force that is greater than them. Raiders of the Lost Ark, of course, did it. It's a great story. A lot of people don't realize that The Keep was really the [one] that did it. F. Paul Wilson was, really, the first guy to do it, to do it right."

The Keep was previously adapted into a film in 1983 by acclaimed filmmaker Michael Mann, though a series of behind-the-scenes challenges resulted in him disowning the theatrically released film, which was a disappointment both critically and financially.

"The challenge is making that story feel fresh, because it's been copied, even a lot from The Keep, quite a bit," Nicotero teased. "So I think we have a really great take on it and I'm really excited about it. So, soon, soon, soon."

Based on George A. Romero's iconic 1982 horror-comedy classic, Creepshow is still the most fun you'll ever have being scared. A comic book comes to life in a series of vignettes, exploring terrors ranging from murder, creatures, monsters, and delusions to the supernatural and unexplainable. You never know what will be on the next page...

Check out Creepshow Season 4 on Shudder, AMC+, and AMC now. Stay tuned for details on The Keep.

Are you looking forward to the reboot? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is set to take fans across the world, both the real and mystical. The first season of Disney+'s live-action adaptation of Rick Riordan's best-selling novels brings the first installment, The Lightning Thief, to the streaming screen. As emphasized by Riordan, who also serves as an executive producer on the show, these first eight episodes are as faithful to the source material as possible. This means notable characters like Ares (Adam Copeland) play a major role while crucial locations like the St. Louis Arch are on full display.

Among those big locations is the Underworld. Greek mythology's answer to hell, this kingdom of Hades serves as the ultimate destination for Percy and company on their cross-country quest. The latest trailer shows a brief glimpse of Jay Duplass's Hades approaching Percy and Grover in his throne room. In a twist, the Percy Jackson depiction of the Underworld is not fiery and red but rather dreary and gray.

Percy Jackson's Production Crew Detail Creating the Underworld

Speaking to ComicBook.com at New York Comic Con, Percy Jackson and the Olympians production designer Dan Hennah (The Lord of the Rings) noted that this show's Underworld serves as the antithesis of Mount Olympus.

"It was really about [asking], 'What is hell?' Hell is nothing," Dan Hennah said. "I think the thing was to go monotone. To go surreal and have a surreal world. We also architecturally went to the opposite of Mount Olympus. It's an upside down world, an upside down version of Mount Olympus, but in a very, very distinctive Hades style. It's like Hades is the architect of his world."

Like most of Percy Jackson's big set pieces, the Underworld was created with a blend of practical and virtual effects. Much of the wider landscape was done on an Industrial Light & Magic Volume screen.

"I mean the underworld is such a beautiful environment in its own way," ILM VFX supervisor Jeff White said. "It really stands out from the rest of the series and I think there's a whole design language between Olympus above and Hades environment down below that we embraced for this. But it is a very black and white world and I think that kind of adds to the character of it."

"We came up with an idea that there isn't a sky there. It's basically a massive cavern like on a monumental scale," VFX supervisor Erik Henry added. "That meant it needed to have a ceiling instead of a sky. What we did is we had mountains that were there and through the clouds you can see that the mountains are kind of bleeding into the sky with this kind of black flow. I said it must be raining upside down because that's what's creating that. Black and white yes, but also something that is really arresting the images when you see them."

Percy Jackson and the Olympians begins streaming on Disney+ on December 20th.

Horror movies might be the easiest films in Hollywood to franchise. Halloween has thirteen movies (and a TV show on the way), Friday the 13th has twelve movies, and Amityville has become a catch-all name for a slew of low-budget schlock. Knowing that it's a little surprising that 2008's The Strangers took ten years to get just one sequel, and since then it's just been the two movies. That will soon change as the franchise is getting a facelift in the form of not just one new movie, but an entire trilogy that has already been shot and will be released next year.

Speaking with ComicBook.com in a new interview, director Renny Harlin (who helmed all three of the new movies) opened up about his plans for the new trilogy. When asked if the new movie, which he describes as not really a reboot nor a remake, would reference the other two The Strangers movies, Harlin replied: "Definitely." The filmmaker continued though, perhaps implying that any references to the original movies might be more in an Easter egg capacity and not in terms of continuity. He adds:

"I have to say that the original Strangers is one of my favorite horror films ever. I remember seeing it and, and not knowing anything about it and being just blown away that how random it's violence is, how these people get into a city situation which they don't understand at all. And us as the audience keep wondering why. And we realized like, like you said, it's just because they happen to be home in that house. And that's exactly what we are exploring. For me, it was very important to give the fans of the original film, give them the same experience. Obviously, the movie is not a carbon copy in any way, but it definitely has a similar story of two young people in an environment that should be cozy and safe and turns out to be a night of all nightmares. And I think it was very important to give the fans the similar experience that they enjoyed the first time. And then those who don't know anything about the original can come here here just with no expectations, give them something that will blow their socks off."

"I, as a fan of the original film, I wanted something that feels familiar, feels, truthful to the original. And then we obviously, we made a second movie and a third movie at the same time because we wanted to explore uh the reasons behind this. I feel like myself, and I'm sure a lot of the people who love the love, the original film were asking the question, like, why did this happen? And who were these people? And where did they come from and where are they going next? And that's the kind of answers that I wanted to explore in the second and the third movie and just go beyond what the original movie was."

The Strangers: Chapter 1 cast includes former Riverdale star Madelaine Petsch as Maya, with Froy Gutierrez as Ryan, and Rachel Shenton as Debbie. A previously released description for the movie described it as follows: "From master director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger, Die Hard 2, The Exorcist: The Beginning) comes a new trilogy of terror. In Chapter I, Madelaine Petsch (TV's Riverdale) stars as a young woman starting a new life with her fianc?. Suddenly, during a road trip stop in a remote vacation rental in the woods, they become the prey of a mysterious gang of masked strangers who attack without warning or reason. What begins as a fight to stay alive becomes one woman's journey of courage and cunning in this horror series bridging three compelling films."

No official release date for The Strangers: Chapter 1 has been confirmed, but the movie and its two sequels will be released in 2024.

Avalon Hill has teamed up with actor, producer, director, and tabletop entrepreneur Matthew Lillard to create a special two-part Haunt for Betrayal at House on the Hill 3rd Edition as part of Betrayal Season of Treason. The new Haunt is titled Thirteen Ghouls Are All That, and is themed around Lillard's career in the form of a fictional actor named Dexter Norville and his sidekick P.I. Pup. Fans can tune into a live play of the new Haunt right here at 7 PM, but ComicBook had the chance to speak to Lillard all about the new Haunt, which features a host of easter eggs that fans who have followed Millard's career will undoubtedly get a kick out of.

"It's one of those things that in my life very rarely do opportunities come along and you're like, oh, I'm excited about this. You get lucky and you find something that speaks to you," Lillard said. "It speaks to the person you are and speaks to the brand that speaks to who you are as a person. Like me doing something for Doritos doesn't make any sense. Me doing something for Betrayal is like, oh, this is epic. Sitting down with the team and saying, 'Hey, what do you guys want from me? What do you expect?" Because in this kind of a relationship, I want to be engaged authentically, I don't want to just put my name on something because you're creating a Haunt."

"Let's dig in and let me help and let me be a part of the game design. Stepping into that and having the team sign onto that was really exciting, and then in the early part of the process, I was like, 'Hey, if we're using me, then let's build the Haunt around something I'm associated with, like becoming an older, fading actor,' which I thought was awesome. And so that's where we started that conversation," Lillard said.

The team mined Lillard's career and wove references into every part of the Haunt, and some of the Omens are fantastic, with Lillard noting some pretty deep cuts. "Let's find fun Easter eggs from my path in my career, I didn't think they would deliver such deep cuts. There are some cuts in there I'm like, 'Wait, I think this is from In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale,' or there's just some random stuff, which I thought was hilarious for the weird obtuse Matthew Lillard fan out there who's followed along with my long and painful career. I think that when you give creative people the ability to do what they do best, and empower them to have fun, then you get these great results," Lillard said.

"I think that's what happened here. I think that collectively the team, I was like, 'Let's dig into my career, let's make fun of it, and let's have fun.' And I think that as you play through the game, you can feel that, the idea that the cats are coming. That's a reference to Wing Commander, but the idea of giving them an opportunity to poke fun at something, they had a blast. And I think that that comes off in the game," Lillard said.

Lillard had the chance to test the Haunt out at Gen Con, and it was another level of thrill to see the fans put the Haunt through its paces and come away having such a great time.

"Getting a chance to sit down at the table playing the new edition, playing through the Haunt itself was awesome. I played at home once and obviously, I read through all the cards and I got familiar with it," Lillard said. "Then we went and shot it at Gen Con and had an absolute blast playing it. That's when it comes alive. We were excited to be there and excited to play something for the first time. It had never been played before in that capacity, and so I think the game came to life through that, right through the live play."

"And look, you're surrounded by people, you're surrounded by the crew, you've got lights going, and there's a performative aspect of it, sure. But the good news is that the game held up," Lillard said. "You spent all this time and energy putting something together and in gameplay it was like, oh, this is as fun as we had hoped. That was the rewarding part. You put all the time and energy into it, and then once you get it and it goes live, under live fire, it was like a blast. So that's good."

"I'm excited for fans of the game, fans of Matthew Lillard and his weird career, getting to smash those two worlds together," Lillard said. "And the idea that the team Avalon Hill is making this haunt a free download, I think is super cool. I think it's a celebration and you don't see that very often from big corporations. The idea of, 'Hey, let's give back in this moment.' And trying to build the Season of Treason to try to support the game in this moment I think is super cool."

Lillard would love to team up on another Haunt down the line, but the idea of new people coming in and lending their unique voice to Haunts is one he hopes to see continue even if it's someone else.

"Yeah, look, I would love it. I think that the only important thing, in this moment, is that we deliver for the fans of Betrayal, something that they have fun doing, whether it's me or anyone else. I think that the intersection of pop culture and a game that gives you something fresh to play, I think it's exciting and really smart. It makes the game evergreen if you continually add cool nuance and cool and exciting ways to rope people into this awesome game, Lillard said.

If you are interested in checking out Matthew Lillard's new Haunt, you can download it free of charge on Hasbro Pulse, and the link will become available at 7 PM EST. You'll need the base game to play, so head over to Amazon or Walmart to pick it up.

When Warner Bros. Animation first announced that Joel McHale would be playing Johnny Cage in a series of animated Mortal Kombat movies, plenty of fans thought it was the perfect fit. Now McHale, who has played the part in three movies since 2020, says that's how he feels about Karl Urban, the Dredd and The Boys star who was recently tapped to play the role in live action. Noting that he is a fan of The Boys, McHale praised Urban's performance in the show, and said that bringing him in as Cage is "perfect casting."

Assuming the Mortal Kombat Legends movies continue, McHale isn't likely to lose his role anytime soon. Urban's take will first appear in Mortal Kombat II, the sequel to Warner's overperforming 2020 hit, joining a cast that includes Lewis Tan, Mehcad Brooks, and Tati Gabrielle.

"He's one of the better actors around," McHale told ComicBook.com's Chris Killian. "My sons and I watch The Boys religiously, so yeah, he's perfect. I think he was nominated for an Emmy for The Boys, pretty sure. It's perfect casting."

You can see the full video above.

Here's the official synopsis for Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match:

Neon lights... Suits with shoulder pads... Jumping from explosions in slow motion... In 1980s Hollywood, action star Johnny Cage (Joel McHale) is looking to become an A-list actor. But when his costar, Jennifer (Jennifer Grey), goes missing from set, Johnny finds himself thrust into a world filled with shadows, danger and deceit. As he embarks on a bloody journey, Johnny quickly discovers the City of Angels has more than a few devils in its midst. He faces off against a sinister secret society plotting a nefarious scheme, but the brutal fight against the bloodthirsty warriors of the Netherrealm is just beginning. Can Johnny, alongside other Mortal Kombat legends, save humanity...and, more importantly, his career?

The film stars Joel McHale (Animal Control, Community) as Johnny Cage and Jennifer Grey (Dirty Dancing, Red Oaks) as Herself. Also starring in the movie is Gilbert Gottfried (Aladdin, Royal Crackers) as David Doubldy, Dusan Brown (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom) as Chuck Golden, Grey DeLisle (Teen Titans Go!) as Kia, Robin Atkin Downes (Luck, DC Showcase: Constantine - The House of Mystery) as Shinnok, Zehra Fazal (Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe) as Jataaka, Gilbert Gottfried (Aladdin, Royal Crackers) as David Doubldy, Kelly Hu (Arrow, X2: X-Men United) as Ashrah, Matt Yang King (Elemental) as Concierge, Phil LaMarr (Futurama) as Brian Van Jones, Matthew Mercer (Resident Evil: Death Island) as Director/Bully, Dave B. Mitchell (Call of Duty franchise) as Raiden and Armen Taylor (Justice Society: World War II) as Master Boyd.

Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match is directed by Ethan Spaulding (Mortal Kombat Legends: Battle of the Realms) from a script by Jeremy Adams (Justice League: Warworld), who also penned the screenplays for the series' first three films, and supervising producer is Rick Morales (Mortal Kombat Legends franchise, Bablyon 5: The Return Home). All four films are based on the Mortal Kombat videogame franchise created by Ed Boon and John Tobias. Sam Register and NetherRealm Studios' Ed Boon are executive producers.

Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match will be available on October 17 to purchase Digitally from Amazon Prime Video, AppleTV, Google Play, Vudu and more. 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray will be available to purchase online and in-store at major retailers. Pre-order your copy starting July 22, 2023.

Nearly 40 years after George A. Romero and Stephen King's Creepshow landed in theaters, Shudder revived the concept for an all-new TV series that captured the spirit of the original movie, yet shifted formats for the streaming age. The series has largely kept the spirit of the original movie alive while also bringing contemporary filmmakers into the fold, but one of the integral components of the original film, John Harrison, has returned to offer a more direct connection to the film that has become a cult classic among audiences. While Harrison composed the score of the original Creepshow, he directed two segments in Season 4 of the series. Creepshow Season 4 premieres on Shudder, AMC+, and AMC on October 13th.

Based on George A. Romero's iconic 1982 horror-comedy classic, Creepshow is still the most fun you'll ever have being scared. A comic book comes to life in a series of vignettes, exploring terrors ranging from murder, creatures, monsters, and delusions to the supernatural and unexplainable. You never know what will be on the next page...

ComicBook.com caught up with Harrison to talk the new season of the series, the lasting legacy of the franchise, and more.

ComicBook.com: There're so many other anthologies that have just been released over the years, what do you think it is about that original Creepshow and the concept of it that has just really resonated with fans over the years?

John Harrison: Well, I don't want to get too pretentious about it, but I think that part of it is that, first of all, it's a lot of fun. It's very creepy stories told exceptionally well by a master. And so, first of all, it's very, very well done. And you don't get the sense that you're really slumming it when you watch Creepshow. You're watching a really high-end movie. So I think that's one of the reasons it's held up for so long. But I think it's just the kind of storytelling, the stories, are very succinct. It's an anthology, so you're not spending two and a half hours trying to get to the point, and there's a place for that, of course.

But in these horror stories, I don't want to call them bite-sized, because they are certainly more than that, they have a way of getting under your skin really quickly. And then you move on to another story and it's got a completely different tone, style, and everything else that can really be different from the other ones. Therefore, you're constantly amused and entertained and hopefully frightened.

This might surprise you to hear, but horror fans can be a bit cynical about reboots or remakes or revivals or whatever. So if somebody was apprehensive about getting involved in the new Creepshow, if they were like, "George Romero's not involved, Stephen King's not involved, who the heck cares about that?" what do you think it is about the TV show that does really capture the spirit of that original movie?

Well, I have to point the finger at Greg Nicotero then, because even though Greg was not involved in the original Creepshow movie, he certainly was part of the whole Romero tribe, if you will, for many, many years, and has carved out a career on his own in terms of monster making and special effects and his own directing with things like The Walking Dead. We certainly give him the bonafides to enter this world, so that's number one. But I also want to give him credit and those of us who he's asked to join on this little odyssey of trying to maintain ... There's been a very definite directive to maintain the spirit and the fun and the style that George and Steve created back in the day. We are not reinventing the wheel here. We are trying to live up to the style that was created back then because that's what people still love, and we want to deliver that to them.

Yes, we have the advantage of some new technology and we have the advantage of some storytelling freedom that maybe we didn't have back then. But I would really say to anybody that's skeptical, you've got to jump in and have a look because you'll find a lot of stories that will give you the same thrill that you had when you watched the original movie. Not to take anything away from the original movie, it's The Godfather, but we tried to live up to it.

You bring up a good point about how Greg is masterminding things or serving almost as a mentor. Is there much collaboration between all of the filmmakers who are involved to either try and unify the tone or look of an installment or is the freedom in how you can set yourselves apart with each story?

Well, it's a little bit of both because Greg chooses all the stories. So, right from the jump, he has a continuum and a style that is uniform for the entire season. But each director, I think, that he is asked to be a part of it is going to bring something unique to it. That's the beauty of the anthology, that you can have different moments from different points of view throughout an entire season.

One unifying factor that has been very helpful, I think for all of us, is the inclusion of Rob Draper, who was a cinematographer. Rob was not involved in the original Creepshow, but he did the Tales from the Darkside TV series and he shot Tales from the Darkside: The Movie with me for Paramount. So first of all, he's a veteran of anthologies. He knows and loves the genre and the original Creepshow. And Greg enlisted him right from the get-go to be the cinematographer on this series so that he could bring a consistency of style and tone to the whole series. I think that other creatives involved Greg's shop, KNB Effects, all of us have been pulling in the same direction. I had the advantage of being George's first assistant director on the original movie, so I go back, I know what it's all about. But having these other team members has been really a wonderful way to keep it consistent.

What was it about "Smile" and "Baby Teeth" that really excited you as a filmmaker? Did Greg just think you'd be a good fit for them or was it that they really caught your interest?

Well, I was lucky because Greg picked them and he sent them to me and said, "I think I'd really love you to do these two." When I read them, I thought, well, he knows me. It was a really good choice. And the reason I really loved them is because they're very different.

"Smile" is a very odd, psychological horror story. There's not a lot of violence, not a lot of bloodletting. It's really all in the guy's mind and what's really happening to him and his wife for something that happened to them a long time ago. "Baby Teeth," on the other hand, is typical Creepshow. A young girl has an encounter with the Tooth Fairy, which is a little bit different than what she expected, let's put it that way. And it's got a very interesting and fun monster in it. For me, doing these two was just a lot of fun because I could exercise two different styles and have two different approaches.

Speaking of that creature in "Baby Teeth," what was the design process like for that? Was it a fully formed idea of what it would look like? Was it a collaboration between you and KNB?

It was mostly KNB. With these schedules and budgets, we don't have a lot of time, at least the director doesn't, for too much of the input into that. And besides, we're dealing with KNB, and what could be better? So Greg had an idea. Once he had settled on the story, I think he and his team had started to put together ideas for what this little creature could look like. When he showed them to me, I thought, "Well, geez, there's not much I can add. This is really great. Now the question is, how can I shoot it to its best effect?" And that's what I brought to the table.

You've worked on so many cool projects over the years, you've worked on other anthologies like Monsters and Tales from the Darkside. Do you think those projects could ever earn a similar revival or do you think, especially Tales from the Darkside and Creepshow, there's so much common DNA between those two TV shows and those two movies, do you think Creepshow's scratching that itch? Or do you think both Monsters and Tales from the Darkside are their own unique things, their own perspectives, that they're worth bringing back for a new generation?

Well, I think that they do have their own unique identity. I don't know, the question you're asking is almost more of a business question than it is ... Would I love to see a series of Monsters, would I love to see a series of more Darkside episodes? Sure. You got the money? I'll go do it. It's really a matter of a distributor, a network, or whoever who would want to pull that off.

Is there enough of an appetite for it? Yeah, I think so. There are a lot of anthology series now on TV. I think it's a storytelling paradigm that people like. I think that's been proven. I remember in the '90s, George and I used to go around L.A. and try to sell anthology series and we couldn't get arrested. We had a couple of ideas and we partnered up and we were going around town, couldn't get arrested.

I don't know, exactly, what tipped the balance. Both his movie and my movie were very successful, so I don't know why people didn't see it. But they didn't, until into the 2000s, and now there's a lot. I think, in general, there's a breaking point there, too, that horror, for a long time, was considered a low-rent arena in Hollywood. The movies made money and they made a lot of them, but it wasn't until ... Genre was a very hard sell in television for a long time. And then, somewhere around the 2000s, it started to happen.

I did the Dune miniseries, Ron Moore did Battlestar Galactica. They were hugely successful. All of a sudden, people started to say ... Genre and the Sci-Fi channel started coming up with stuff, people started to say, "Maybe genre really has a place." And now you turn on the television and everything's genre all the time. So it's maybe just a matter of timing, who knows?

For years, the various iterations of Dune were more like cult classics. You really had to find people super passionate about Dune to have a conversation. And now, what the most recent movie did and this upcoming movie is doing, it's taking it to a whole new level. I was just curious what your thoughts on that were, whether you enjoyed the movies or if you're just excited about the fact that the popularity of it will introduce new audiences to what you did with Dune?

Well, all of the above. I'm very excited about it. Richard Rubenstein and I were still involved in the development of several attempts to try to get it off the ground after my miniseries. And, maybe fortunately, some of those never came to pass because I think what Denis Villeneuve has done is just fantastic. And I love him as a director.

I wasn't involved at all in the latest movies except to have my name put up there, but I think it's just fantastic and I'm really looking forward to the new ones. I hope it does introduce a whole new audience to the Dune world. If they are able to get back and see my miniseries, I'm very proud of them. We were able to ... I think the success of them, they won a couple of Emmys and they were hugely successful here and abroad. I think they gave people faith that Dune actually could be adapted again.

The David Lynch version has its strengths, but clearly the run time that your miniseries was able to tap into helped make them understand that this cannot be contained to one two-hour experience. And clearly they've learned that lesson, I like to think entirely because of you.

Well, thank you very much. I'll take that.

Lastly here, and this might be something super specific, it might be completely off your radar, but when Eli Roth made his Grindhouse trailer, he used your music from Creepshow in "Thanksgiving." And now he's finally made his Thanksgiving movie into a full feature, is that something that you're at all involved with? Was it just a totally random selection of your piece of music for that trailer and now he's doing his own thing, or are you involved at all with this new Thanksgiving?

No, I'm not involved with it at all. I've been aware of it. Now, back in the day when Quentin [Tarantino] and Robert [Rodriguez] were doing the Grindhouse movies and Roth was going to do the ... They called me and said, "Listen, we love this piece and we want to put it in there and would you give us permission?" And, of course, I said, "Yes." But he's finally getting a chance to do it, so he's going to put his own imprimatur on it, and I'm sure the music that he'll choose will be pretty creepy.

Creepshow Season 4 premieres on Shudder, AMC+, and AMC on October 13th.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. You can contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter.