What a coincidence? New month, new weekly pop culture news recap.

As usual, we start with notable deaths from the period, and that includes comedic actress Teri Garr, who was most prolific in the 1970s and 80s, appearing in the likes of Young Frankenstein, Tootsie, and, less comically, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Garr passed aged 79 after living for decades with multiple sclerosis.

Lifestyle

This week, the Comic Con Africa team have officially named the dates and venues for CCA 2025, as well as sister show Comic Con Cape Town 2025 (though we knew about the latter already). No real changes there, though notably CCA is set AFTER the Heritage Day public holiday for a second year, instead of incorporating it. Comic Con Cape Town is also back to being a 4-day event after this year’s 5-day stint.

What is new, though, is a phased and tiered approach to pricing. Early Bird deals and other specials, like Black Friday and Valentine’s Day, are par for the course with the Comic Con events, but this new phasing has been introduced to “to reward early buyers and help manage event capacities.”

Also, you’ll notice that the Thursday and Friday of CCA, which are considered the quieter days of the con, are now priced R50-R60 lower than the typically sold out and star-packed weekends. In summary, if you jump on the Early Bird offer now, you can get a day pass for Cape Town for R190, and Joburg from R170. Leave it to the day of the con, and if things aren’t sold out, you’ll be paying R250 and R270 respectively. As usual, kids 5 and under attend free, and 4-day passes are also available.

Film

Okay, we’re not ready to let go of Halloween just yet. So here’s the first full trailer for Steven Soderbergh’s Presence, a supernatural horror film with a difference: It’s shot from the perspective of the house-haunting ghost. Lucy Liu, Julia Fox and Chris Sullivan play the affected living family, while the screenplay is written by Jurassic Park, Spider-Man and Panic Room’s David Koepp.

Presence arrives in cinemas starting 24 January.

Netflix has a tradition of unearthing some real gems for the holidays, amidst all the saccharine cookie cutter romances. Especially on the animation front. So keep an eye out for That Christmas, which arrives on the streamer on 4 December.

This British made festive adventure, from Locksmith Animation, comes with the additional attention-grabbing hook that it’s based on the children’s book series by filmmaker Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, and Love Actually). Curtis himself writes and executive produces this adaptation, which consists of a series of entwined tales set in one town during a disaster-struck Christmas.

Your biggest movie news tidbit for the week:

Series

It’s a good thing that Agatha All Along was as good as it was, because Marvel Studios has a lot coming to Disney+ next year, as this promo clip reveals. You certainly don’t want to be suffering from MCU fatigue in 2025.


If you need a breakdown:

  • 22 December 2024: Marvel Animation’s “What If…?” returns for its third and final season, with daily episodes.
  • 29 January 2025;: New high school-set animated series Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man joins Marvel Animation’s lineup.
  • 4 March 2025: Live-action Daredevil: Born Again launches, continuing on with the Netflix era continuity instead of being a reboot for Disney+.
  • 24 June 2025: Ironheart acts as a Black Panther: Wakanda Forever follow-up, centering the action on brilliant returning inventor Riri Williams.
  • 6 August 2025: Limited animated series Eyes of Wakanda gives audiences a look at various Wakandan agents who ventured out in the world during their nation’s Isolationist period.
  • October 2025: Brace for Marvel Zombies, a whole animated series where heroes and villains are turned undead.
  • December 2025: Time for a whole new hero, in the form of live-action Wonder Man, with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in the title role.

New Netflix animated series and game adaptation Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft has been renewed for a second season, barely two weeks after its debut, soothing viewer nerves over that cliff-hanger ending. That said, some eagle-eyed fans have noted that the series was originally ordered as a two-parter. Anyway, the official plot synopsis for Season 2:

When adventurer Lara Croft discovers a trail of stolen African Orisha masks, she joins forces with her best friend Sam to retrieve the precious artifacts. Lara’s thrilling new adventure takes her around the globe as she delves deeper into the hidden secrets of Orisha history, dodges the machinations of a dangerous and enigmatic billionaire who wants the masks for herself, while discovering these relics contain dark secrets and a power that defies logic. Power that may, in fact, be divine.

Lara has crossed paths with several evil billionaires over the years, but this description seems to imply that original game villain Jacqueline Natla may be making her debut in the unified franchise timeline.

Regardless of this tease, in an interview with Tudum, showrunner Tasha Huo outlined what fans can expect of Lara’s character evolution this time: “So Season 1, thematically, is about Lara embracing how her dad dealt with grief, which was isolating. When we meet Lara, she’s very isolated … As we get into Season 2, we’re trying to build Lara’s team over the course of the show, so she goes from isolated hero, who only wants to do things on her own — a lone wolf — to realizing, ‘Actually, I have this really cool team behind me.’ ”

Hayley Atwell is back voicing Lara Croft, while The Boys star Karen Fukuhara (who had like three lines in S1) receives an elevated to co-starring role as Sam Nishimura.

On other Tomb Raider matters, Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner and Bohemian Rhapsody’s Lucy Boynton are apparently among the actresses testing for the role of adventurer Lara Croft in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s upcoming live-action Tomb Raider series for Prime Video. This show will be set in its own universe, separate from the games and Netflix anime, but evidently it is going the “young Lara” route again.