Maybe it’s the post-holiday season malaise. Maybe it’s the all-consuming distraction of the Los Angeles fires and *waves hand* everything else happening in the world right now, but 2025 has started on a relatively quiet note in terms of pop culture news. Below are the film, series and gaming stories that caught our eye.

Meanwhile, on the notable deaths front, there’s the shock suicide, on 3 January, of The Little Hours and Spin Me Round filmmaker Jeff Baena (47), husband and long-time partner to actress Aubrey Plaza. Meanwhile, Olivia Hussey, who played Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s classic take on Romeo & Juliet, has died from resurgent breast cancer at 73. Hussey’s other high-profile film appearances include slasher Black Christmas and Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile, both released in the 70s.

Film

The 2025 Golden Globe Awards, AKA the 82nd Golden Globe Awards, took place on Sunday, 5 January, in Los Angeles, and, as usual, all eyes were on the show as an indicator of the upcoming Oscar race.

Going into the ceremony, musical crime comedy Emilia Pérez, with ten nominations, became the most nominated comedy or musical film in Golden Globes history, while period drama The Brutalist received seven nominations. Both of these movies were the big winners of the evening, with Emilia Pérez taking home four awards (including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Non-English Language Motion Picture, and Best Supporting Actress for Zoe Saldana) while The Brutalist scored wins for Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Actor – Drama for Adrien Brody, and Best Director for Brady Corbet.

You can see all the Golden Globe winners here, but some notable results include:

  • Latvian animated film Flow beating out efforts from the likes of Aardman, Pixar and Disney to win Best Animated Film.
  • Wicked only picking up one accolade: The crowd-pleasing award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.
  • Shogun being named Best Drama Series, and scoring a further three acting awards, for Anna Sawai, Hiroyuki Sanada and Tadanobu Asano.
  • Baby Reindeer winning in two of its three categories (Best Limited or Anthology Series or Television Film, and Best Supporting Actress – Series, Miniseries or Television Film)
  • Sebastian Stan (A Different Man), Demi Moore (The Substance), Colin Farrell (The Penguin) and Jodie Foster (True Detective: Night Country) all winning acting awards for their big and small screen work.

On other award show matters, here are the nominees for this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, where the awards are voted for by members of union SAG-AFTRA, AKA the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. In other words, the results of this performance-centred awards ceremony are determined by actors’ peers.

Meanwhile, the Academy Awards schedule has been impacted by California’s fires. Voting by Academy members was supposed to close on 12 January, but that has now been pushed out two days to 14 January. That same two-day shift has been applied to the nominations announcement. Originally set for Friday, 17 January, that streamed and broadcast event has moved to Sunday, 19 January.

Out of interest, this year’s Oscar ceremony will take place on 2 March in Los Angeles, with Conan O’Brien hosting.

Valentine’s Day is around the corner, and Hollywood has two unconventional, but very different, romances lined up for the same day as we enter February. The first is Love Me, a post-apocalyptic tale with film festival pedigree, as it debuted at last year’s Sundance gathering.

The official plot synopsis: Long after humanity’s extinction, a buoy (Kristen Stewart) and a satellite (Steven Yeun) inherit the Earth, and with only the internet as their guide, learn what it means to be alive and in love. Love Me combines live-action, animatronics, and classic animation. It’s in cinemas from 31 January.

Prepare for more unhinged, unpredictable horror. Also out 31 January is Companion, which features many of the same producers as Barbarian, as well as that film’s writer-director among their number.

Ideally you want to go into Companion knowing as little as possible, but from the trailer below we can see that the plot revolves around Jack Quaid’s character “jail breaking” Sophie Thatcher’s android for his own amusement. That is, until she regains control of her body and sets out to kill him.

Two movie news tidbits for this period:

More Fear Street movies are on the way. In an interview with author R.L. Stine, the creator of that specific teen slasher series, and Goosebumps, he revealed that three more movies are in development. This is in addition to already-announced Fear Street: Prom Queen. All of the Fear Street movies are set for Netflix debut.

The long-running rumours are true. Jason Momoa will remain in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new DC cinematic universe, but he’s no longer playing Aquaman. Instead, he will be antihero Lobo in upcoming Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

Gaming

Assassin’s Creed Shadows has had another release date backslide. Last year, the next installment in Ubisoft’s historical action adventure franchise – which this time takes players to 16th Century feudal Japan – shifted from November 2024 to 14 February 2025. Now the game has bounced back again, to 20 March.

On “related to gaming” matters, video games remain Hollywood’s flavour of the month when it comes to adaptation material following the success of projects like Arcane, Sonic the Hedgehog and Fallout. On the horizon now? Live-action movies based on Horizon Zero Dawn and Helldivers 2, while a Ghost of Tsushima anime is in the works alongside its own feature film. All this, and more, was revealed during Sony’s CES press conference.

Oh, and thanks to this trailer below, we know The Last of Us Season 2 returns to HBO, Max (and Showmax in South Africa) this April.