Before we jump into the various standout pop culture stories of the past week, we need to mention the passing of actress Annie Wersching, aged 45, from cancer. While Wersching’s name may sound unfamiliar, you probably know her face (and voice) as she played the likes of agent Renee Walker in 24, the Borg Queen in Star Trek: Picard, alien superhero Karolina on Marvel’s Runaways, Stefan and Damon’s mother in The Vampire Diaries, plus she performed Tess in the original game version of The Last of Us. Life is short.

Film

We love a good scary movie, the tension-ratcheting kind that has you sinking into your seat or hiding under the duvet late at night. That seems to be very much the case with supernatural horror tale The Boogeyman, based on a short story by Stephen King.

High school student Sadie Harper (Yellowjackets’ Sophie Thatcher) and her younger sister (Vivien Lyra Blair) are reeling from the recent death of their mother and aren’t getting much support from their father, Will (Chris Messina), a therapist who is dealing with his own pain. When a desperate patient unexpectedly shows up at their home seeking help, he leaves behind a terrifying supernatural entity that preys on families and feeds on the suffering of its victims. The Boogeyman comes to cinemas on 2 June.

After months of rumours, denials, confirmations and clarifications, filmmaker James Gunn has officially gone on the record to outline his, and Peter Safran’s, plans for the DC Universe (formerly the DCEU) as co-CEOs of DC Studios. Much like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the DCU will be linked across film, TV, animation and gaming, while anything that isn’t part of the shared universe (e.g. Matt Reeves’s The Batman) will be considered an Elseworlds project, outside of continuity.

You can watch the full five-minute presentation below, or check out this handy infographic, but some of the key announcements include:

  • A Booster Gold series focused on the image-obsessed time traveller who uses future technology to set himself up as a superhero in our present day.
  • A Superman film reboot, featuring a younger version of the character, coming in 2025.
  • A film that brings The Authority, basically DC’s “The Boys,” into the DCU.
  • A True Detective inspired Green Lantern series, starring “space cops” Hal Jordan and Jon Stewart.
  • A Paradise Lost series focused on the Amazons and Wonder Woman’s island home of Themyscira.
  • A Batman film that spotlights the Batman-Robin dynamic in the form of Bruce Wayne and his biological son Damian.
  • A darker Supergirl movie called Woman of Tomorrow.
  • A Swamp Thing origin story in film format.

For the record, thanks to its popularity, the CW’s Superman & Lois series is expected to continue for a couple more seasons. This despite all other live-action DC series ending or being cancelled recently.

Series

A live-action Tomb Raider series is in the works at Amazon. And Fleabag and Killing Eve’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge is writing and executive producing it. It’s super early days for the Prime Video project, but you can read more about it here.

Please note that the Amazon series is not to be confused with Netflix’s still upcoming animated Tomb Raider series, where Hayley Atwell voices the strong-willed adventurer.

Prime Video may have cancelled Paper Girls after one season but the streamer apparently isn’t done with telling sci-fi tales centred on teenage girls. Based on Naomi Alderman’s award-winning novel, The Power explores a situation where, without warning, teenage girls around the world develop the power to electrocute people at will. Which obviously has repercussions for the gendered power balance we as know it. The cast of The Power includes Toni Collette as Margot Cleary-Lopez, the mayor of Seattle, Auliʻi Cravalho as Margot’s daughter, and John Leguizamo as Margot’s husband.

The Power premieres on 31 March, and will have weekly episode drops until the season finale on 12 May.

Dropping on Disney+ on May the 4th, AKA Star Wars Day, is Volume 2 of animated anthology series Star Wars: Visions, which gives animators free rein to reimagine the Star Wars universe. While Volume 1’s collection of shorts was made by several Japanese animation studios, the 9-episode Volume 2 is a global creative effort. And, hey, along with Wallace and Gromit’s Aardman out the UK, it includes South Africa in the form of Cape Town’s Triggerfish, whose Star Wars short is titled Aau’s Song. Learn more about the animators involved, and the Volume 2 shorts here.

Paramount+ is pulling an HBO Max, and stripping shows from its streaming service to cut costs. The removals mean they don’t have to pay residuals to the rights owners and creators involved.

Affected shows, at least to start with, include Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Super Pumped, and American Rust, with Jeff Daniels. Paramount+ is also swallowing TV network Showtime, leading to a rebranding as Paramount+ with Showtime. Early casualties of the merger and house cleaning are American Gigolo and Let the Right One In, both of which are newbie Showtime series with just a single season. More on the move here.

Finally, a few tidbits:

Gaming

We try not to report on rumours, but this one has quite some credibility given events of the past few weeks. The rumour? Having picked up the Tomb Raider IP rights from Square Enix in May last year, Embracer Group has now sold the franchise to Amazon for $600 million.

It’s all unconfirmed, but we know that Amazon is publishing the next Tomb Raider game (for multiple gaming platforms), they’ve got Phoebe Waller-Bridge writing a TV series (see above in this very post), and they want to make a new feature film centred on iconic aristocratic adventurer Lara Croft. Reportedly Amazon want to creates an interconnected cross-media Tomb Raider universe, spanning games, TV and movies – much like Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, and what Netflix has with The Witcher. And, I mean, would you make that kind of hefty “all in” investment if you didn’t own the rights?