Following San Diego Comic-Con last weekend, it’s been a quiet week for pop culture news all round. That said, a few intriguing projects have been unveiled, and announcements made, largely courtesy of Netflix. Find them all below.

Series

Finally, we know when surprise smash hit Squid Game will return. The dark Korean drama sees its Season 2 drop on 26 December this year. With it comes the news that a third and final season is out in 2025.

While plot details are under wraps, in Season 2, viewers can look forward to unlikely Squid Game winner Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) enacting his plan for revenge, and that starts with joining the game again after a three-year search for an entry point. This will pit him against the masked Front Man, a callous figure who oversees the torturous trials, where financially desperate people compete in deadly versions of children’s games.

Sure there are several highly acclaimed animated Star Wars series, but on the live-action front, the projects have tended to skew more towards older viewers in recent years. That is set to change with Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, an eight-episode coming-of-age saga from Jon Watts, the filmmaker behind the Tom Holland trio of Spider-man movies.

In Skeleton Crew, four children end up on an adventure across the galaxy when they get lost during an attempt to return to their home planet. Aiding the kids is Jude Law’s Force user, while Nick Frost voices droid SM 33. Meanwhile, directing episodes are the likes of David Lowery, Bryce Dallas Howard and Everything Everywhere All at Once’s Daniels duo.

Skeleton Crew starts streaming on 3 December on Disney+. You can read more about what to expect of the series via Empire here.

Finally a couple of series news tidbits:

What’s next for the creators of The Karate Kid sequel and spin-off Cobra Kai, now in its sixth and final season on Netlfix? Possible a prequel series that delves into the backstory of Mr Miyagi.

Peacock has dropped its plans for a Battlestar Galactica reboot. The third iteration of the sci-fi series, where humanity has been decimated by their robot creations, the Cylons, will now be shopped around to other streaming services and channels.

Film

Bleeker Street is ensuring we eat good in terms of that special sci-fi sub-genre genre that is psychological thrillers in space.

In Slingshot, a trio of astronauts embarks on a years-long mission to Saturn’s possibly habitable moon Titan. But as the team is faced with technical issues in the lead-up to a risky slingshot manoeuvre around Jupiter, one astronaut starts to lose his grip on reality. Starring Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne, and The Boys’ Tomer Capone.

Slingshot comes to cinemas on 30 August.

What’s this? An actually sincere Kevin Smith movie? Reported to be the filmmaker’s most personal effort yet, The 4:30 Movie is a coming-of-age comedy set in 1986, and centres on three sixteen-year-old friends who spend Saturdays sneaking into movies at the local cineplex. When one of the guys invites the girl of his dreams to see an R-rated film, the theatre manager (Ken Jeong), teen rivalries and other mishaps interfere with his plans. Along with leads Austin Zajur, Nicholas Cirillo, Reed Northrup and Siena Agudong, expect cameos from the likes of Rosario Dawson, Jason Biggs, Jason Lee, and Justin Long.

The 4:30 Movie hits cinemas on 13 September.

Around the same time Disney’s Moana 2 is coming to cinemas, Netflix is debuting Spellbound, the new animated film from Skydance Animation, on the small screen. The movie has a substantial amount of pedigree, with ex-Pixar and Disney Animation head John Lasseter producing, Shrek’s Vicky Jenson directing, and music from Alan Menken (Beauty and the Beast) and Glenn Slater (Tangled). In the movie, a princess (voiced by Rachel Zegler) must embark on a quest to save her family and their kingdom after a mysterious spell transforms her parents (Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem) into monsters.

Spellbound comes to Netflix just in time for the US’s Thanksgiving, on 22 November.

Lifestyle

One more thing for this week is that the final international cosplay guest has been announced for Comic Con Africa 2024. The UK’s Har_Fie, AKA Harry Field is back after delighting fans at last year’s pop culture celebration. Har-Fie will be at all four days of CCA 2024; that’s 26 to 29 September. He’ll be appearing alongside CutiePieSensei and Yuji Koi.

Keep track of all the CCA 2024 guests and speakers, plus find everything else you need to know about the event, here.