We skipped the seven-day news recap last week to get our Dune: Part Two review done, so here’s a double up on standout pop culture stories.

In terms of notable deaths, there have been two in this period: comedian, writer and actor Richard Lewis, probably most famous for Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights, died on 27 February, aged 76, from a heart attack. He had suffered from multiple health issues in recent years. Meanwhile, manga and anime fans are saddened by the news that Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball, passed on 1 March at 68 from subdural hematoma (i.e. bleeding on the brain).

Film

It’s been a week for first looks at upcoming projects via some enticing still images.

After years in development hell, The Crow remake finally releases on 7 June this year, with Bill Skarsgård playing musician Eric Draven, who returns as a vengeful spirit after he and his fiance Shelly (FKA Twigs) are viciously murdered by gang members. Snow White and the Huntsman and Ghost in the Shell’s Rupert Sanders directs this fresh take on the 90s indie comic by James O’Barr. 1994’s The Crow film is famous for being the set where Brandon Lee, Bruce’s son, died. Vanity Fair has more images and a preview feature here.

Meanwhile, filmmaker James Gunn took to social media to unveil the Superman logo which will feature in the currently filming Superman: Legacy, which has also been renamed simply to Superman. Superman comes to cinemas in July next year.

Still speaking first looks, here’s the first promotional image from Tron: Ares. Out in 2025, Tron: Ares, which is apparently disconnected from previous Tron films, stars Jared Leto, Evan Peters, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, and Gillian Anderson. It will apparently be mostly set in the real-world, with Leto’s title character an anthropomorphic computer program who leaves his realm.

Meanwhile, with personifications top of mind, this what the new emotions of Anxiety, Ennui, Envy, and Embarrassment look like in Pixar’s Inside Out 2, in cinemas from 14 June. There’s even a new trailer.

We always pay attention to movies released under the A24 banner, and upcoming I Saw the TV Glow looks like everything you would expect: weird, wonderful and memorable. From writer/director Jane Schoenbrun and starring Justice Smith and Brigette Lundy-Paine, I Saw the TV Glow sees two teenagers bond over a supernatural TV series, only for their reality to blur when the show is cancelled. The film comes to cinemas starting 3 May.

Horror films tend to repeat the same dark and moody setting, which means Late Night with the Devil caught our eye for breaking so dramatically from the mold. Shot in the found footage style, the film is set in 1977, during a live television broadcast which goes horribly wrong. David Dastmalchian is fictional TV host Jack Delroy, with Laura Gordon playing a guest parapsychologist, and Ingrid Torelli a teenage girl who survived a Satanic cult’s mass suicide.

Late Night with the Devil comes to cinemas on 22 March before heading to horror streaming service Shudder.

Series

Prime Video’s Fallout, an adaptation of the beloved Bethesda video game series, keeps looking better and better. With the series releasing in just over a month, the promotional machine is ramping up, with a new trailer (watch it below), character posters and series poster.

Overseen by Westworld’s Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, Fallout is set 200 years after the nuclear apocalypse, when the naive inhabitants of fallout shelters, known as Vaults, are forced to return to the irradiated hellscape their ancestors left behind. The series ensemble cast includes Ella Purnell, Aaron Moten, Walton Goggins and Kyle MacLachlan. Surprisingly, all eight episodes of Fallout arrive at once, on 11 April.

A few more TV tidbits for you:

  • Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender, despite a mixed response from critics and viewers, has already been greenlit for two more seasons – in line with the animated series on which it’s based.
  • The Brothers Sun has been less lucky. The martial arts comedy drama, which features Michelle Yeoh in a starring role, has been cancelled by Netflix after one season.
  • This could classify as gaming news as well but production company Rooster Teeth, which came to fame for its Halo-born web series Red vs. Blue, and, later, hit Western anime series RWBY, is shutting shop after 21 years. Rooster Teeth has apparently been unprofitable for some time, and parent company Warner Bros. Discovery failed to find a buyer for it.
  • Shooting internationally with a largely British cast, Season 2 of Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon was unaffected by last year’s acting and writing strikes. The result is that the series will return on HBO and Max in June.
  • We’ve known for a while that Lionsgate wants to revive its Twilight franchise as a TV series. Now it turns out that the show, based on the bestselling supernatural romance novels by Stephenie Meyer, will be animated.

Gaming

Xbox dropped another surprise partner showcase this week. You can watch the nice and compact 30-minute Partner Preview here, or digest all the game announcements, trailers and fresh looks here in written recap form. That said, these are the three titles that stood out for us most.

Out in 2025 from the maker of Framed is Sleight of Hand, a genre-blending title that is officially described as a “third-person card-slinging occult noir stealth sim.” Players assume the role of occult detective Lady Luck (voiced by Debi Mae West, Metal Gear Solid’s Meryl Silverburgh), who sets out to take down her former Coven using a cursed deck of cards. Sleight of Hand is a day one Game Pass launch for Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC. Wishlist on Steam as well here.

Also sporting a female lead, in the form of The Witcher’s Anya Chalotra is the curiously titled Unknown 9: Awakening from Bandai Namco and Reflector Entertainment. Forming part of a planned Unknown 9 cross-media universe, Awakening is a third-person action-adventure where you play as Haroona, a woman who can tap into a shadowy dimension known as the Fold to manipulate people, objects and weapons from a distance. This is useful as she faces the Ascendants, a breakaway faction of a secret group known as the Leap Year Society, who want to exploit the Fold for their advantage.

Unknown 9: Awakening comes out on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC in the Northern Hemisphere summer this year.

Finally, there’s The Alters. We’ve known about this unusual sci-fi survival base builder for a while, but the Partner Preview provided a fresh look at what to expect from 11 bit studios, the same game makers behind Frostpunk and This War of Mine. Essentially, after crash-landing on a planet, your simple worker Jan Dolski must create different versions of himself to man his base, and use their unique abilities (while managing their unique personalities) to escape before they’re roasted by the sun.

The Alters comes to Game Pass, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC at some point this year.

Still talking Xbox, these are your Game Pass additions for March, with Control: Ultimate Edition being the special standout for the US’s Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day (8 March).

Lifestyle

The five-day Comic Con Cape Town 2024, which kicks off on 27 April at the CTICC, is less than two months away, and the past two weeks included a handful of new guest announcements. These include Pokemon voice actor Veronica Taylor, who was at Comic Con Africa last year; local artists in the form of Keith Vlahakis and Jason Masters; and FanCon favourite John Layman, of Chew and Detective Comics fame, who last appeared at a South African comic convention back in 2017.

Veronica, Keith and Jason will be at Comic Con Cape Town 2024 all days, while John will be present on Saturday, Sunday and the public holiday Wednesday.