Maybe it’s the writers’strike. Maybe it was the Memorial Day holiday weekend in the US. Either way, it’s been a relatively quiet few days in terms of news from the worlds of film, TV and gaming. Here are the announcements and trailer reveals that stood out for us from the period.

Series

The streamers have a lot of all-star content lined up for the Northern Hemisphere Summer. Netflix is dialing up the hype even further with its annual Tudum showcase, streaming to the world this year live out of Brazil.

Coming up on 17 June at 5:30pm Brazilian time (that’s 10:30 pm South African and European time), the global fan event will see stars make exclusive announcements and debut never-before-seen footage, trailers, and more from highly anticipated shows, movies and games. Notable upcoming projects that will make an appearance during Tudum include Zack Snyder’s sci-fi epic Rebel Moon, live-action anime adaptation One Piece, and the Avatar: The Last Airbender live-action series.

Disney isn’t bothering with a dazzling livestream showcase, but they have released an updated press release of all their new and exclusive titles coming to Disney+ this year. We’ve got your top picks for June on the streamer here, but looking beyond this month, these are the upcoming highlights:

  • 5 July: Afrofuturist (and made in Africa) animated anthology series Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire
  • 8 August: comedic murder-mystery series Only Murders in the Building S3
  • August: The latest Star Wars series Ahsoka, following fan-favourite former Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano
  • 6 October: Marvel’s Loki S2, the first MCU series to get a follow-up set of episodes
  • 29 November: Another Marvel series, Echo, centred on the deaf martial artist audiences first met in Hawkeye
  • December: Win or Lose, Pixar’s first official longform episodic series, involving a softball championship
  • No date: Welcome to Wrexham S2, the football docuseries with Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds.

Your sole notable trailer for the week is for dystopian tech-centred anthology series Black Mirror Season 6 (there was a Season 5 in 2019?). Creator-writer Charlie Booker’s dark, genre-spanning hit returns with five new movie-length stories that span eras, and seem to pushing in surprising new directions. As usual, Black Mirror has assembled some serious on-screen ensemble talent, which this time includes Annie Murphy, Salma Hayek, Michael Cera, Aaron Paul, Josh Hartnett, Kate Mara, Zazie Beetz, Ben Barnes, and Anjana Vasan.

Black Mirror returns to Netflix on 15 June.

One other piece of TV news: after a noticeable absence in the first season of Just Like That, Kim Cattrall will appear in Season 2 of Sex & The City sequel… in a single scene. Shot separately from the other stars, Cattrall’s Samantha Jones will be shown on the phone from London, having a conversation with Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw.

Film

The new official trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem reveals more of the plot for this high-style animated adventure, which comes with Seth Rogan’s name slapped on as writer/producer. After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers. Their new friend April O’Neil helps them take on a mysterious crime syndicate, but they soon get in over their heads when an army of mutants is unleashed upon them.

TMNT: Mutant Mayhem’s voice cast includes Nicolas Cantu (Leonardo), Sharon Brown Jr. (Mikey), Micah Abbey (Donnie), Brady Noon (Raph), Jackie Chan (Splinter), Ayo Edebiri (April), Ice Cube (Superfly), Seth Rogen (Bebop), John Cena (Rocksteady), Paul Rudd (Mondo Gecko), Rose Byrne (Leatherhead), Post Malone (Ray Fillet), Hannibal Buress (Genghis Frog), Natasia Demetriou (Wing Nut), Maya Rudolph (Cynthia Utrom), and Giancarlo Esposito (Baxter Stockman).

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem releases on 11 August. One other piece of info is that Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross will be scoring the movie.

Animated favourite How to Train Your Dragon is getting a live-action movie remake, with an eye on releasing in March 2025. Now it looks like Hiccup and Astrid have been cast. They will be played by The Black Phone’s lead Mason Thames, and The Last of Us’s Nico Parker (who played Joel’s daughter).

Lifestyle

Comic Con Africa 2023, which is coming up in Johannesburg on 22-25 September, has announced its first celebrity guest: Youtuber Aki Dearest, a content creator who has amassed over 2.8 million subscribers thanks to the frank, comical way she documents her life in Japan, and her personal thoughts on anime and otaku culture.

Gaming

Interactive streaming series aren’t exactly new. Projects like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch have already been released, but they tend to be walled-off “single player” experiences where individuals make choices that shape their unique experience of the story. That’s not the case with Silent Hill: Ascension. Genvid’s new interactive series, coming out later in 2023, not only spearheads Konami’s promised Silent Hill franchise revival. It has a novel approach to community-driven narrative, combining livestream and video game, where together, in real time, audiences influence the outcome of events.

You can find out more about how exactly Silent Hill: Ascension will work, here. In short, though, every day at predetermined times, through the official site above, there will be new sequences to shape through community interaction. This process can continue for months, and should a character die, the story will shift to a new protagonist.

Here’s something to keep an eye on. A new game studio, Blank., has been formed in Warsaw, Poland by CD Projekt Red veterans. Mateusz Kanik, game director of Cyberpunk 2077 and co-game director of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, with The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 executive producers, Jędrzej Mróz and Marcin Jefimow, have teamed up with a promise to make beautifully crafted and surprising gaming experiences

A quote from Kanik: “After working for years in an increasingly conservative industry, we’re ready to make bold, impactful projects that share our unique creativity and values. Where the industry champions a dictatorship of the creative individual, we want to give ownership to the team. Where the industry leans on crunch culture, we prefer work-life balance. Where the industry says bigger is better, we’re setting our sights on highly polished games with a focus on emotion, story, and craftsmanship.”

The first of these projects is “a character-driven game set in an apocalypse, with a twist or two.” It was teased with the following piece of concept art.

One other piece of gaming news: last year’s hit feline adventure Stray, AKA the backpack cat game, is coming to Mac. There’s no release date at this stage, however. The announcement comes after rumours the past few weeks that Stray will soon be playable on Xbox as well, as the one-year PlayStation exclusivity deal ends.