Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2019 i SFX

Some shows have you at hello. Game Of Thrones grabbed me when Jaime Lannister pushed Bran Stark out of a window at the end of episode one. I should probably point out that I’m not normally one to celebrate defenestration – especially of a child – but this moment of unexpected violence announced that this was a show prepared to go to places few others would dare. Now, as the show’s final season approaches, Game Of Thrones has become the biggest show on TV, and – sorry, Peter Jackson fans – arguably the definitive screen adaptation of an epic fantasy. So, to celebrate the beginning of the end, we rounded up 11 of the show’s stars to tell us what to expect (p32). Here be dragons! Elsewhere in yet another…

Something is rotten in the kingdom of Britannia. Sky’s historical fantasy series is poised to return to screens later this year with Roman general Aulus (David Morrissey) seeking to subjugate the fractious Celtic tribes, while the leader of the druids, Veran (Mackenzie Crook), marshals the resistance. Then comes a new threat: Harka, the Dead Man, Veran’s brother with an agenda all his own. Crook plays the two sides of this particularly twisted sibling coin. “I’m playing my own brother,” he says. “When they approached me and asked me if I was interested my initial reaction was, ‘Yes, absolutely,’ very quickly followed by crushing doubt [as to] whether I could pull that off. I quickly realised the prime reason to do it is to challenge yourself and it’s a real privilege…

HOW TO GET A HEAD “When I found out that I got the audition, I did the classic and wore a black dress and red lipstick, and then tried to get fangs and failed. So, I auditioned and then I had a second audition with [co-creator] Taika Waititi on Skype where it was really weird because he could see my whole body, but I could just see his head.” IN THE BLOOD “The character was just on the page. It reminded me of so many of my Brit aunties and cousins. It was such a funny scene that they had me read, and I know this sounds cheesy, but I was really like, ‘Oh, I could do this part.’” THE DEVIL IN THE DETAIL “Front and centre for me was,…

As the host of Radio 4’s The Life Scientific and numerous BBC Four documentaries, theoretical physicist Jim Al-Khalili is more usually associated with science fact than science fiction. That’s about to change with Sunfall, a debut novel that began life at a launch party for one of Al-Khalili’s non-fiction books, when his publishers asked what he was planning to write next. “I thought, ‘Well I’ve got everything off my chest in terms of what I want to write about in physics, maybe I should write fiction!’” he laughs. “It was only a joke but they said, ‘Oh, that sounds interesting! We’ll have to sign you up with our sci-fi commissioning editor…’” Sunfall is set in 2041, when the Earth’s magnetic field is about to collapse, potentially exposing all life on the…

RICHARD EDWARDS EDITOR RAVES Loving the latest trailer for Good Omens… RANTS …but not sure about the Dark Phoenix teaser giving away a big death so early on. I can’t help feeling that the BBC and ITV’s Britbox service is coming about five years too late – especially as Channel 4 aren’t involved at the moment. IAN BERRIMAN REVIEWS EDITOR RAVES Looking forward to picking up the soundtrack of ’70s Nigel Kneale TV movie The Stone Tape on Record Store Day. RANTS I caught Swedish chiller Black Circle at the Glasgow Film Festival. Great premise (a hypnotic vinyl record), dreadful film. RHIAN DRINKWATER PRODUCTION EDITOR RAVES Russian Doll was just tremendous – felt like it came out of nowhere and dazzled with a great concept and brilliant performances. RANTS Slightly…

YOU KNOW TWILIGHT. Even if you’ve never read it, you’ve heard about it. Maybe you’ve seen the film on TV, or you spied the books on the endcap of a bookstore, or your favourite cousin gushed about it, to no one’s surprise. Even if you don’t know Twilight, you do. You know that an unassuming, clumsy girl named Bella falls head over heels for a mysterious boy in her science class. He turns out to be a 109-year-old vampire. The rest, as they say, is history. Twilight is now as ingrained into our collective cultural subconscious as Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. You might know it as the book that got you into reading, which welcomed you into the broader world of books. Or you might know it as…

Daenerys had one of the most compelling journeys on the show. What’s that been like for you to play? It’s been the biggest gift an actor could be given. You get a chance to flex every kind of muscle and also to take the audience with you on the journey. It’s not just: “Here’s a monologue about what happened to my character as a kid.” I actually got to live through each of the experiences that created Daenerys. What did you think when you read the final script? I read it in an afternoon and then I just left my house and walked around London for about three hours. It’s so epic. There’s a lot that happens. Ten years of anyone’s life is [going to be] filled to the brim…

The books that make up A Song Of Ice And Fire are big. Really big. For that reason not everything or everyone made it to screen. Here are just a few of the major differences between the books and the show… Tyrion has a much darker side. When Symon Silver Tongue (a character who’s fully absent from the show) tries to blackmail him over his relationship with Shae, he orders Bronn to murder him. Silver Tongue’s corpse is chopped up and put into a pie! Tyrion’s facial disfigurement from the Battle of the Blackwater is also far worse – he loses his nose entirely. House Greyjoy has another awful son in the form of Victarion – brother to Euron. Victarion loathes his brother (who seduced and made his wife pregnant),…

THE OUTER LIMITS 1963-1965, 1995-2002 Launched by ABC in 1963 as their answer to The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits promised its SF-hungry audience a calorie-rich diet of bug-eyed monsters and shiny spaceships – Serling’s series was always more earthly in its approach to science fiction. It was The Twilight Zone, only louder and brasher. NIGHT GALLERY 969-1973 Rod Serling’s other anthology show remains less celebrated, though there’s still some top-tier writing contained within its 43 episodes. It doesn’t have quite the consistency of its predecessor, however, as Serling failed to secure complete creative control over this one. It lasted three seasons. BLACK MIRROR 2011-present If the original Twilight Zone reflected the fears and concerns of the era it was made in, certainly Charlie Brooker’s acclaimed anthology does the same…

DID YOU HEAR THE story about the mother who found out her husband was having an affair, drowned her two sons in a fit of rage, realised she couldn’t live with the guilt, and threw herself to a watery death, only to return as a dangerous, child-abducting spirit? That’s the sad tale of La Llorona, the Latin American myth that’s inspired the latest horror movie from the studio behind the scarily successful The Conjuring series and IT. “To this day, she’s cursed to walk the Earth for all eternity, looking for her lost boys, and looking for the souls of children to take their place,” The Curse Of La Llorona director Michael Chaves tells SFX. “I grew up in Southern California, so my friends would tell me the story. It…

Throughout its history, Magic: The Gathering has amassed a number of rare cards but only one has gone on to be sold for over $87,000. The infamous “Black Lotus” was released in the first Magic core set on 5 August 1993 before being re-released in the Beta and Unlimited sets. Costing no mana to play, Black Lotus allows its user to add three lands of any colour to their mana pool, making for a hugely powerful card. Due to its ability, Black Lotus is banned or restricted in most versions of Magic, making it a very expensive collector’s item.…

EBONY This apparently ordinary black cat was the familiar of powerful witch Agatha Harkness (governess of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman’s son, and Scarlet Witch’s magical tutor), and was able to transform into a monstrous panther. NIELS Like superhero Speedball, Niels was accidentally zapped with energy bubbles from another dimension, giving him the ability to create a cushioning field around him. On Earth-97161, Niels used the name Hairball, as part of the Pet Avengers! SEDRICK This ginger kitty featured in an ’80s Conan The Barbarian tale. A girl called Solaise found him in some catacombs. Enabling her to tap into deadly powers, he turned out to be a boy who’d been transformed by Thulsa Doom. SPIDER-CAT Spider-Man’s equivalent on Earth-999 was this moggie, whose nemesis (in his dreams) was…

FIRST LOOK UK TBC US DC Universe, Fridays Showrunner Jeremy Carver Cast Diane Guerrero, Joivan Wade, April Bowlby, Brendan Fraser EPISODES 1.01-1.04 A superteam created in 1963, featuring misfits feared and hated by the world, led by a man in a wheelchair. The X-Men, right? Wrong. Launched a few months before Marvel’s merry mutants, DC’s Doom Patrol were touted as “The world’s strangest heroes”. Subsequent incarnations only made them stranger – Grant Morrison introduced a teleporting, sentient street called Danny. All of which makes Doom Patrol a surprising but refreshing choice for DC’s second all-new, live-action drama series on its recently launched streaming service. Of course, DC already has one wacky superteam series in Legends Of Tomorrow. But Doom Patrol has a different vibe to Legend’s cheery naffness – part Preacher…

RELEASED 8 APRIL 2018 | 12 | Blu-ray (3D/4K/standard)/DVD/download Director James Wan Cast Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Dolph Lundgren, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II DC finally completes its long break up from Zack Snyder in Aquaman, a superhero film that’s about as far from his over-pumped grimdark approach as possible. Even more than Wonder Woman, this is a film that owes a visible debt to the Marvel universe, not least the Thor trilogy, Guardians Of The Galaxy and Black Panther, from which it borrows liberally. Atlanna (Nicole Kidman), the queen of Atlantis, washes up in Maine in 1985 and falls in love with her rescuer, Thomas Curry (Temuera Morrison). The pair have a son, Arthur, a slightly weedy kid who can talk to fish. When Atlanna returns to…

RELEASED 8 APRIL 1980 | PG | Blu-ray Director Jeannot Szwarc Cast Christopher Reeve, Jane Seymour, Christopher Plummer, Teresa Wright BLU-RAY DEBUT Adapted from Richard Matheson’s 1975 novel Bid Time Return, Somewhere In Time is schmaltzy, but retains a strong romantic pull. Writer Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) is celebrating the performance of his latest work when an old lady hands him a watch. Years later he becomes obsessed with a portrait of a young actress, Elise McKenna. Convinced that this was the woman, he hypnotises himself and travels back to 1912 to woo her. Those looking for a solid SF rationale will be disappointed – this is pure melodrama that pays only lip-service to its time travel mechanic. But while the imagery is chocolate box-sweet, the film has a wistful…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1999 | 18 | Blu-ray Kolo-what? What looks like an unfortunate letter selection on Countdown is actually Greek for “maimed” – appropriately, as this low-budget indie centres on a young woman who self-mutilates. Putting ’90s reality show The Real World through an Italian horror filter, it’s a magpie movie, pilfering Scream’s meta, Suspiria’s theme and Lucio Fulci’s ocular trauma. The acting’s iffy, the location drab, but sheer ambition means it’s not a load of Bolokos. Extras Commentary; Making Of; two interviews; short; trailer; gallery; booklet.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1998-2000 | 15 | Blu-ray Directors Hideo Nakata, Jõji Iida, Norio Tsuruta Cast Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Miki Nakatani, Yukie Nakama BLU-RAY DEBUT One of the most influential horrors of the past 25 years, Ring not only inspired an export boom in Japanese cinema, and a slew of remakes, but led to Hollywood absorbing J-Horror tropes into its bloodstream. This box set collects four of the franchise’s core entries. Twenty-one years on, Ring still stands up, even though the tech driving its high-concept – watch a cursed videotape and you die a week later – is antiquated. Its marriage of folkloric bogeyman (vengeful spirit Sadako), contemporary setting and urban legend framing make for a heady pitch, but it’s the understated stillness of director Hideo Nakata’s handling (and…

Our pick of the paperbacks: James Smythe’s latest, I STILL DREAM ( , out now, The Borough Press). When she was seven, Laura’s dad disappeared. Aged 17, she builds a rudimentary AI. Sharing decades of Laura’s experiences, this surrogate best friend grows with her; the book’s fractured structure gives us snapshots of her life every 10 years. We said: “Each episode is vividly imagined and emotionally important. It’s Laura’s story – her loss, her loves, her memories – that gives the humanity to this future.” Marcus Sedgwick’s THE MONSTERS WE DESERVE ( , 4 April, Head Of Zeus) follows an author who becomes fixated on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and everything he dislikes about it. Then he receives a visitor: Shelley’s ghost… We said: “Both beautifully written and not a little…

In the wake of her sister Kira dying, Sophie stumbles across online conspiracies that her and other children’s deaths may not be what they seem… I GO TO TURN OFF THE PHONE BUT my thumb hovers where it is. I click on the link and the video box pops up on my screen but an error appears in the box: Sorry, this video does not exist. A quick search shows a bunch of proxy links but each one of those has the same error message when I try to follow it. A stab of anger dulls when I think, how would I feel if it were Kira? I wrap the towel around me tightly and head to my bedroom, slip into my flannel pyjamas, climb up the ladder and beneath…

Remaining Marvel/Netflix shows Jessica Jones and The Punisher cancelled. But Marvel’s streaming TV presence will expand on Hulu, who’ve greenlit four animated shows focused on MODOK, Hit-Monkey, Tigra & Dazzler and Howard The Duck. Star Trek: Discovery to get third season. Arrow’s eighth season will be its last. The Haunting Of Hill House to get follow-up season based on Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw. Catherine Hardwicke directing The Lost Boys (yes, that The Lost Boys) pilot for the CW. Neil Gaiman working on new version of Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. Amazon’s The Lord Of The Rings show to be set in the Second Age of Middle-earth. BBC Studios bags TV rights to Michael Moorcock’s Runestaff. Ben Mendelsohn to front adaptation of Stephen King’s The Outsider for HBO…

149 Hodor in Game Of Thrones Kristian Nairn managed to last six seasons of Game Of Thrones only ever saying one word – “Hodor!” “It was reactionary,” he admits. “I just said ‘Hodor’ in a way that matched how he’d been spoken to. It was the same delivery I’d have used for any other response.” We caught up with him at the Middle East Film & Comic-Con in Dubai. www.mefcc.com Would you like to play the role again? I’m still really sad about it, actually. I miss playing him. I always knew he had an important part to play. I wasn’t sure what it would be, but I just knew he was there for a reason. What’s the most memorable fan encounter you’ve ever had? Um… I’m not going to…

In April, DC launches a new kind of graphic novel. Under the DC Ink banner, DC will target a new audience through an imprint dedicated to telling out-of-continuity stories written by Young Adult authors. The first release, Mera: Tidebreaker, is well timed, riding the wave of success of James Wan’s Aquaman, and centred around one of the film’s characters. But did writer Danielle Paige (Dorothy Must Die) catch Aquaman at the cinema? “We are obsessed with the movie!” Paige tells Red Alert. “And we hope it left audiences wanting more Mera (and Arthur)! DC gave me the chance to write an original origin story for Mera, and Stephen Byrne brought it to life with his gorgeous imagery. I think the movie leaves audiences curious about Mera.” What is it that…

“It’s like reading someone’s dream sometimes,” muses writer Mark Huckerby of Tove Jansson’s beloved Moomin books. He’s something of an expert now, having spent – along with co-writer Nick Ostler – the better part of four years living in Moominvalley, the setting of Jansson’s gorgeously weird, melancholy and funny tomes. “There was a knock on the door before Christmas 2015,” Huckerby reveals, “and the postman delivered a huge box of not only all the novels but a stack of the later comics. We had this mass of material that we had to become massively familiar with.” All of that research was in aid of writing new TV series Moominvalley. The first CG adaptation of Jansson’s work, it’s a part-crowdfunded British/Finnish co-production, and Finland’s most expensive TV show ever, with a…

WHEN I WAS 11 OR 12, THE ENORMOUS GREY desktop computer in the storage room of our house was where I spent my evenings. One day, from somewhere, my father procured a thing called an emulator – a magic trick the computer played on itself that made it believe it was a Nintendo Game Boy. Three games sat there, in a folder, ready to be clicked: Pokémon Red, Pokémon Blue and Harvest Moon. Harvest Moon is a farming simulator. This particular iteration of it provides players with a tiny pixelated farm, an even tinier pixelated town, seasons, livestock, vegetables and some vague allusions of magic. You can choose to play as either a girl or a boy, which at the time felt huge to me. I played as a girl.…

“ALL THE CHARACTERS IN OUR SHOW ARE HOPELESS” Scroll through Timothy Dalton’s CV and what becomes instantly clear is that the man has played just about everything, from King Lear to James Bond. Even ignoring his stage work, he’s got more than 60 film and TV credits in his six-decades-long career. Now at age 73, he’s co-starring as Chief in DC’s decidedly adult TV adaptation of Doom Patrol, and he’s refreshingly candid about the roles of career past. “There’s one or two that I’d wish I’d never been in,” Dalton admits to SFX with a smile. “But the truth is even the ones that are okay, or not so great, they do represent total commitment. And therefore, you could say my blood, my bones are in ’em. It’s all part…

How familiar were you with the myth of La Llorona? Anyone who is Latin or grows up in Latin culture knows the myth of La Llorona – it’s like stories of the Wolf Man, Frankenstein or Dracula. And it’s a pretty scary story. There have been sightings of La Llorona in Latin culture, throughout Mexico, New Mexico, Los Angeles… I remember growing up there were two kids who were killed in a park near a lake, and everyone was saying it was La Llorona. Was the La Llorona in the movie similar to the La Llorona in your head? Yes, they were very very true to the description of La Llorona. It has been said that this woman deteriorated so much that she was basically a bag of bones who…

“DEVON’S GREAT BUT THERE WASN’T A LOT TO DO – I DIDN’T GO TO A GIG UNTIL I WAS 17” TODD MILSTEAD IS A THOROUGHLY unpleasant man. An adulterer and a know-it-all, Milstead plays at being a writer, despite having no discernible literary talent. He does, however, have an eidetic memory, and when he finds himself quoting a book that nobody else recalls, Milstead decides to “write” the novel. Such is the set-up to David Quantick’s horror-comedy All My Colors. “It’s about a man who does something, and there are consequences and there are more consequences – and there are no twists or turns,” says Quantick. If that makes the novel sound unremitting, that’s rather the point. Quantick took inspiration from Stephen King’s Thinner [written as Richard Bachman], which tells…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 15 | 116 minutes Director Jordan Peele Cast Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Elisabeth Moss, Tim Heidecker Jordan Peele’s Get Out pulled off the trick of combining unsettling scares with a social commentary subtext – well, text – that sparked debate and discussion and propelled the movie straight into the pop cultural consciousness. It also sent Peele to the Oscar stage to collect a trophy for Best Original Screenplay. Now he’s back with another blend of terror and thought, one which belies the pressure that first success might have imparted. In Us, what’s going on under the surface is, again, at least as important as the main story. The Wilsons, headed by Lupita Nyong’o’s Adelaide and Winston Duke’s Gabe, head to their summer home. It’s supposed to be a…

Is it true that when you started talking to Warner Bros you had full rein to choose a DC character? That they weren’t already making. Superman and Batman were always in the pipeline, and Wonder Woman was already on its way. So very early on, it was really just down to Aquaman and The Flash. But I went away and I thought about it. The biggest thing that struck me at the time was the fact that we’ve seen incarnations of The Flash on TV, but we’ve never really seen Aquaman. That part got me very excited. It felt like the freshest path into the superhero world. We’re so used to seeing superhero films and SF films where the threat comes from another dimension. In this one, it’s directly there,…

RELEASED 8 APRIL (download out now) 2018 | 15 | DVD/download Director John McPhail Cast Ella Hunt, Malcolm Cumming, Sarah Swire, Christopher Leveaux Shaun Of The Dead effectively invented the zom-rom-com, but Anna And The Apocalypse enhances the micro-genre by adding Christmas, high school movie tropes, and song and dance routines to the mix. Otherwise it’s a familiar tale of people turning into bloodthirsty monsters, delivered with enough wit and charm to keep things fresh. There’s a lot to like here: the British small town setting is refreshingly glamour-free, the cast of unknowns are likeable and there’s an admirable level of gore. The film’s also unafraid to put lead characters in extreme, sometimes lethal peril. Introducing an implausible human threat in the last act is something of a misstep, however,…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1995 | 18 | Blu-ray BLU-RAY DEBUT Tony Todd’s slasher returns for patchy sequel Farewell To The Flesh. It’s largely a less evocative repeat of the original’s formula (idiots say Candyman’s name five times into a mirror, then die at the hook-hand of a vengeful spectre), but the film wisely exploits Todd’s charisma and the character’s disturbing backstory to make him a more sympathetic villain. It’s entertaining enough, but the endless organ music will drive some viewers to distraction. Extras Two actor interviews; trailer; booklet.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1989 | 18 | Blu-ray Director Mary Lambert Cast Dale Midkiff, Fred Gwynne, Denise Crosby, Brad Greenquist BLU-RAY DEBUT A blast of Ramones seconds before the tragic event that’s its central pivot sums up the approach of this Stephen King adaptation. While not as goofy as many ’80s horrors, Pet Sematary has a slightly exaggerated tone – fittingly, given that its story seems ripped from the pages of a ’50s horror comic. Solid performances power this ghoulish tale of death, grief and resurrection via an Indian burial ground. Fred Gwynne stands out as neighbour Jed – avuncular yet, thanks to his remarkable face, also possessed of the gravitas of an ancient monument. And two-year-old Miko Hughes is simultaneously laughable and chilling as a revenant toddler who just…

Aliens and cinema are no strangers – but when it was time to design Captive State’s elusive extra-terrestrial threat, Wyatt and his team had a blank canvas to work from. These endless possibilities forced the director to go back to basics and let the purpose of his aliens’ visit inspire their overall look. “We dived into the design with the forethought of asking what purpose do these aliens need to have – not only for the story, but where have they come from and what are they trying to achieve?” he says. “They’re a species that has invaded Earth for reasons of strip mining. We’re a carbon-based planet so we thought they must be a carbon-based species, and once they’re done with us, they’ll move on and colonise the next…

Set on Silicon Isle, an island off China’s southeastern coast that is home to the global hub for electronic recycling, Chinese author Chen Qiufan’s debut novel Waste Tide is all too true to life. “I got this idea from a close friend from my hometown, who used to be in the e-waste recycling business,” he tells Red Alert. “He told me about a town called Guiyu, which might be the biggest e-waste recycling centre in the world. I did some research and was shocked by the miserable living standards of the workers there. That was the trigger for the novel, as I wanted to make some, albeit small, changes. I wish I could do more.” Taking place in the 2030s, the story centres around American Scott Brandle, interpreter Chen Kaizong…

“It’s about time, right?” Indeed, with almost 30 years having passed since he came up with the unholy trinity of Deadpool, Cable and Domino, Rob Liefeld is making up for lost time, creating his first new Marvel character for three decades. Shipping twice a month, Major X introduces a significant new player to the X-Men universe, even if we don’t yet know exactly what he looks like. “He’s got that helmet with an X on!” teases Liefeld, who along with scripting shares pencilling duties on the six-parter with fellow ’90s X-Men alum Whilce Portacio and newcomer Brent Peebles. “I tell everybody it’s all about when he takes that helmet off, but we can’t show you that yet! People will have to tune in in April to see what’s behind the…

The psychological impact of travelling at the speed of light is the concept at the heart of Kameron Hurley’s military SF novel The Light Brigade. The Hugo-winning author creates a war-torn universe where soldiers are transformed into light to travel instantly between distant planets. “The teleporting technology we see in popular SF films is instantaneous,” Hurley tells Red Alert, “but I wanted to tell a story about a nearer future technology. I also worked with Dr Joshua Bowman, who created all of the diagrams that I needed to ensure the time travel was internally consistent.” Time travelling isn’t without its complications though – some return unharmed, some don’t return at all and others come back changed… Fresh army recruit Dietz experiences complications, wondering if she’s experiencing the war differently or…

What is “the Gray”, exactly? The Gray is an alternate dimension that serves as a prison for the monster terrorising the town of Four Paths. No one who goes in there comes out alive. Tell us about your main protagonist… Violet Saunders is grieving her sister and is completely unprepared for the supernatural secrets she’s about to find – but her resourcefulness, wit and strength will see her through. Was there anything in particular which sparked the idea? My college years spent in upstate New York, my lifelong love of atmosphere and horror, and my own personal history with grief all contributed. How long did the book take to write? When it releases, it’ll have been about four-and-a-half years since I got the initial idea. Did you have to do…

BBC and ITV to take on Netflix and Amazon with Britbox, a paid-for streaming service that will showcase shows from their archives. Carrie Coon and Finn Wolfhard sign up for Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters sequel. The Secret Commonwealth, the second book in Philip Pullman’s The Book Of Dust, out 3 October Warner developing horrortinged Aquaman spin-off set around The Trench. Edge Of Tomorrow sequel back in development. Dougray Scott to play Kate Kane’s father in the CW’s Batwoman. Animated Gremlins TV series in the works – Variety reports it’ll focus on a younger Mr Wing and Gizmo. Natalie Dormer joins Penny Dreadful spin-off City Of Angels, set in 1938 LA. Leslie Bibb, Josh Duhamel and Ben Daniels among the cast for Netflix’s adap of Mark Millar comic Jupiter’s Legacy. CBBC to reboot The…

Keith Potter, email Cersei is still the most interesting character for me. There’s so many layers to her character – all that rage and tragedy. Plus the shadow of the Valonqar prophecy is still lurking in the background… Is it finally going to come true? Lisa Crossley, email I really, really, really hope that Jon doesn’t end up on the Iron Throne. He’s such a boring, clean-cut character and I hate his relationship with Dany now. Come on Game Of Thrones, give us one more twist and kill him off in episode one! Dave Lees, email As much as I’ve enjoyed the last few seasons, GoT hasn’t been the same since Tyrion started to get sidelined. He made that show funny and different – glad it’s ending now before it…

FOOD FOR THOUGHT If your kid shows an unhealthy interest in paprika, it could be a sign he’s possessed by an evil Hungarian… goes some of the dubious logic in creepy kid movie The Prodigy, starring Jackson Robert Scott (aka the adorable Georgie from It: Chapter One). The latest from Nicholas McCarthy, who made the rather good genre-bender The Pact, it’s deftly directed but sadly let down by some serious leaps of faith and a plot-holey script. McCarthy admitted he had to re-edit a certain sequence because test audiences screamed for too long and missed the dialogue after. It’s true there are some scary bits, but the movie errs on the side of silly by the end. Keep your screams down people, so you can fully enjoy taking the mick…

THE TWIGLET ZONE In the late ’80s, some advertising execs spotted the similarity between the name of a British savoury snack and Rod Serling’s show – a match made in heaven. POP WILL EAT ITSELF: “DEF CON ONE” The iconic Twilight Zone theme gets a sample here in this pop culture-laden dance track from future movie composer Clint Mansell’s former band. FAMILY GUY: “LOVE THY TROPHY” Rod Serling makes an animated appearance in this “Monsters Are Due On Maple Street”-influenced episode of Seth MacFarlane’s cartoon sitcom. THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN: WILLIAM SHATNER AND JOHN LITHGOW COMPARE NOTES Original “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet” actor William Shatner meets big screen “Nightmare At 20,000 Feet” actor John Lithgow. “I looked out the window and I saw something on the wings of the…

“SHE’S SO COMING INTO HER POWER IN SEASON TWO” Before Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina hit Netflix last year, you could have argued that we didn’t need a new take on everyone’s favourite teenage witch (Melissa Joan Hart forever!). But with its much darker take on the tale of a young half-witch/half-mortal trying to find her place in the world, the Netflix series proved that Riverdale didn’t have to be the only hot TV property to come out of Archie Comics – in no small part thanks to its star Kiernan Shipka. The actress learned her craft while playing Don Draper’s daughter Sally on hit HBO show Mad Men for eight years, and when she bagged the role of Sabrina – “It all happened in the course of a week!” –…

1993 WAS AN EPIC YEAR for science fiction. The X-Files premiered the first episode of its (now) 11-season run and Jurassic Park beat out ET to become the highest grossing film of all time. It was a time well before games like Skyrim and Dark Souls brought fantasy to life in videogame form. It was at this time that designer Richard Garfield began his quest to revolutionise gaming, creating a new type of fantasy with Magic: The Gathering. Where modern fantasy games create expansive open worlds that live inside consoles and PCs, Garfield wanted to conjure a more analogue gaming experience. “I loved the variety that trading cards promise – and often deliver,” Garfield tells SFX. “I like a well-crafted game that fits in a box – but a trading…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12A | 124 minutes Directors Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck Cast Brie Larson, Samuel L Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, Lashana Lynch, Annette Bening To say there was a slight weight of expectation on Captain Marvel’s shoulders is a little bit like saying Tony Stark has a bob or two. As the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first solo lead female hero, anchoring her own film (and, let’s not forget, summoned to action at the end of Avengers: Infinity War) Carol Danvers (Brie Larson) is not only supposed to introduce herself, but stand as a beacon for female empowerment; signal a new way forward for gender diversity in the world of Iron Man, Cap and the rest; and support a rollercoaster ride of a movie, par for the course with…

UK/US Netflix, streaming now Creators Tim Miller, David Fincher Cast Elly Condron, Samira Wiley, Helen Sadler, Time Winters EPISODES 1.01-1.18 This glossy Netflix anthology series consists of 18 quick-bite episodes, each self-contained and running around 10-15 minutes long. They have no connecting themes beyond being SF and/or horror tales (they’re certainly not all about robots). Most are played straight, but several are black comedies in the spirit of the “Tharg’s Future Shocks” strip in 2000 AD. The most obvious things linking the episodes are their strong violence (and sometimes sex), and the fact that they’re largely animated (by different studios). Some episodes are only animated in the way that Gravity was animated, with real actors amidst virtual backgrounds. Indeed, the episode that’s likeliest to be remembered and memed is “Helping…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | 12 | Blu-ray/DVD/download Director David Yates Cast Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudol Say what you like about the first Fantastic Beasts film, but after the long shadows of the Harry Potter films, the shift to a lighter, more magical take on JK Rowling’s wizarding world was welcome. That’s not what you get with The Crimes Of Grindelwald… Imagine if The Philosopher’s Stone had been immediately followed by The Deathly Hallows and you’ll have some idea of the tone shift here. The titular dark wizard (Johnny Depp) has broken out of prison and is intent on wreaking havoc in the wizarding world. Meanwhile, Newt (Eddie Redmayne) is tasked with tracking down Credence (Ezra Miller) in a last ditch attempt to save him from…

RELEASED 5 APRIL 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray/DVD/VOD Part Flash Gordon Making Of, part retrospective, part biography of its self-effacing star, Life After Flash is like several DVD Special Features documentaries all mashed into one. Unfocused it may be, but it fizzes with a love of Mike Hodges’ kinky classic and of leading man Sam Jones. At times heartbreaking, at times funny, at times heartwarming, it’s a fan-level tribute to a man who’s a universe away from the ego monster he played in Ted. Extras Commentary; extended cut; interviews; lots more!…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2018 | U | Blu-ray (4K, 3D, standard)/DVD/download Dr Seuss’s classic gets a by the-numbers CG redo from the makers of Despicable Me. Between the overly pristine animation and cloying sentimentality it’s a film lacking in edge, while the 90-minute runtime stretches the source material wafer-thin. There’s an admirable attempt to expand the role of Cindy Lou Who’s mum and some funny slapstick, but this shouldn’t be on many Christmas lists come December. Extras Interactive map; featurettes; music videos; shorts.…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 1963 | PG | Blu-ray Director Jindrich Polák Cast Zdenek Štepánek, Radovan Lukavský, František Smolík, Otto Lackovic BLU-RAY DEBUT Stanisław Lem’s early novel The Magellanic Cloud provides a loose template for this cerebral Czechoslovakian SF flick. Ikarie XB-1 is a starship on a round trip to Alpha Centauri to investigate a mysterious “White Planet”. Time dilation means that while the mission will take 15 years, when the crew return home they will only have aged by 28 months. Along the way the crew must deal with a derelict spaceship from 1987, a mysterious “dark star”, and that most time-honoured of SF tropes – the crewman going space-crazy. Originally released in the West as Voyage To The End Of The Universe (with several major differences), this disc presents…

RELEASED OUT NOW! 2019 | 15 | Blu-ray & DVD (dual format) Directors Aaron McCann and Dominic Pearce Cast Toshi Okuzaki, Masa Yamaguchi, Mayu Iwasaki, Kuni Hashimoto Remember Top Knot Detective, the early-’90s Japanese TV show about a crime-solving Ronin? Chances are you don’t, since it lasted just one season, only survives in off-air recordings from Australian TV, and, er, never actually existed… This cleverly put-together faux documentary may make you feel like it did, though. Interweaving clips from the fictional show – all wobbly sets and crash zooms, demon badgers and bizarre penis monsters – with the behind-the-scenes story of its egomaniac writer/director/star, it uses tracking effects and drop-out lines to lend a cruddy VHS sheen to its ludicrously OTT ninja battles, incongruous go-go dancer interludes and shameless product…

As ever, loads more we couldn’t squeeze in. VE Schwab’s debut THE NEAR WITCH (out now, Titan) – which sees children going missing from a village by a moor – was first published in 2011. It’s now making its first UK appearance in a revised edition, including a bonus short story and intro by the author. Ashley Poston follows up Geekerella with “companion novel” THE PRINCESS AND THE FANGIRL (2 April, Quirk Books); in this geeky spin on The Princess And The Pauper, a movie star and a lookalike fan swap places. Samira Ahmed’s near-future YA INTERNMENT (out now, Atom) follows a Muslim-American teen who is forced into an internment camp. And Michelle Paver’s WAKENHYRST (4 April, Head Of Zeus) is a gothic thriller in which a lonely girl living…

RELEASED OUT NOW! Publisher DC Comics Writer Scott Snyder Artist Jock ISSUES 1-3 Who would Batman be if things had turned out just a little bit differently for him? This six-issue miniseries (halfway through its run at time of writing) presents a plethora of options – some varying shades of good, two very, very bad… A body turns up in Gotham City – nothing new there. But when Batman examines it, he discovers something terrifying: it’s him, a Bruce Wayne from another reality. He soon learns that this was a happier, more settled (if now also more dead) version. More Waynes start to appear, the victims of two evil alts: the Grim Knight (think Wayne acting like an even more demented Punisher) and the titular Batman Who Laughs, a deranged…