Oh boy, there is so much… not going on. It’s been a relatively quiet week on the headline-grabbing pop culture news front, but we’re grateful for the break. Especially since we’re hip-deep in Q4 game release season. Have you read our reviews this week for the highly anticipated Forza Motorsport and Assassin’s Creed Mirage?
That said, it may be a news lull period, but below you’ll find the projects and announcements that caught our eye over the past few days.
Film
John Woo is one of the great icons of high-style cinematic action, but the last Hollywood movie he made was 2003’s Paycheck. This following the likes of Face/Off and Mission: Impossible 2 (not to mention highly influential The Killer and Hard Boiled in his native Hong Kong). Now, twenty year later, Woo is back with Silent Night, a mostly dialogue-free revenge actioner where a father (Joel Kinnaman) makes vengeance his life mission after gang violence results in the death of his young son and takes away his voice on Christmas Eve.
Silent Night comes to cinemas on 1 December.
Silent Night isn’t the only revenge actioner to receive a trailer this week. We also got to check out Jason Statham in The Beekeeper, which teams him with Fury and The Suicide Squad’s David Ayer. The Beekeeper comes to cinemas on 12 January next year.
Netflix is ensuring we end the year with an all-star apocalyptic thriller, fronted by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke. In Leave the World Behind, a family’s vacation is upended when two strangers (Mahershala Ali and Myha’la) arrive at night, seeking refuge from a cyberattack that grows more terrifying by the minute, forcing everyone to come to terms with their places in a collapsing world. The film is based on the acclaimed novel by Rumaan Alam, and is adapted and directed by Mr. Robot’s Sam Esmail.
Leave the World Behind enjoys a limited cinema release in November before coming to Netflix on 8 December.
Series
We meant to report on this one a while ago. The Burning Girls, based on the novel of the same name by C.J. Tudor, is an upcoming psychological thriller-mystery series that looks like ideal Halloween entertainment. Samantha Morton and Ruby Stokes star as a vicar, and her daughter, who arrive in quaint village Chapel Croft in hope of a fresh start. However, the insular local community has a long history of dark secrets, and distrust of outsiders.
The six-episode The Burning Girls starts streaming on 19 October on Paramount+.
It may have had a disastrous launch back in December 2020, but CD Projekt Red’s sci-fi role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077 has found its feet and passionate following over the past three years. Now it turns out that a live-action series (or maybe a film) adaptation is in the works. It’s very early days for the project, but it’s being made with Anonymous Content, the media company behind shows like True Detective and Mr. Robot, and films like The Revenant and Spotlight.
The live-action Cyberpunk 2077 will tell its own original story set in dystopian Night City. It won’t be the first on-screen project based on CD Projekt Red’s game either. In 2022, Netflix released anime series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners to universal acclaim.
As a final series tidbit, do you want an update on Season 2 of Netflix’s live-action One Piece? You can find a post Writers Strike interview with showrunner Matt Owens here, which includes discussion of the mutual desire to have Jamie Lee Curtis (a huge One Piece fan) join the cast as Dr. Kureha.