Earlier this year, it was announced that HBO Max was developing a prequel to IT. The series, which is titled Welcome to Derry, had set Wonder Woman writer and It: Chapter Two producer Jason Fuchs as the head writer of the series. Now, Variety has announced that Fuchs, along with Brad Caleb Kane, will serve as co-showrunners on the series.
Fuchs reportedly wrote the screenplay for the first episode of the series, based on a story he wrote along with Andy and Barbara Muschietti. Andy Muschietti, of course, directed both IT films starring Bill Skarsgård as the dancing clown, Pennywise. While not set in stone, the hope is that Muschietti will direct the pilot episode of the series. Fuchs, Kane and the Muschiettis will produce the series, with the Muschiettis producing through their Double Dream banner.
Fuchs is perhaps best known for his work on Wonder Woman, Pan and Ice Age: Continental Drift. While Kane has written for episodes of shows such as Warrior, Black Sails and Fringe.
As it stands, details regarding the series are being kept under wraps, but it’s said that Welcome to Derry will be a prequel to 2017’s It: Chapter One. No release date, or casting, has been announced.
1983’s A Christmas Story has stood the test of time as a quotable Christmas classic that finds itself on the yearly watchlists of many. The story of Ralphie Parker provides the right mix of laughter and holiday spirit that combine to make a beloved film. So why did it take nearly 40 years for a sequel, A Christmas Story Christmas, to be made?
According to Peter Billingsley, who returns to the role of Ralphie in the upcoming HBO Max film, time just got away from everyone involved, but that might have been just what needed to happen to make A Christmas Story Christmas work.
There was a lot of conversation about doing a sequel much closer to when the original film came out in 1983. And then, of course, in the early ‘90s… Eventually, it seemed like a distant memory, like we’d never be able to do it. But here we are, Ralphie is all grown up, he has his own family, and it’s an opportunity to really take what was so great from the first one and bring so much of that magic back but with a whole new perspective. You see what his dreams are, where his life is now, who his family is. In some ways, waiting this long makes it all the more special because there were so many new characters that we could bring in, and so many of the old fan favorites that we got to explore as well. Always in the back of my mind I’d hoped that this day would come.
Peter Billingsley
The sequel, which Billingsley produced and co-wrote, finds a grown-up Ralphie the head of the Parker household following the death of his father. His goal in the film is simple: provide a wonderful Christmas experience for his kids; however, the Parker family isn’t particularly well-known for things going smoothly. Part of the problem, according to writer and executive producer Nick Schenk, is that Ralphie is still, in a lot of ways, that little kid with the wild imagination that audiences met in A Christmas Story.
Ralphie, though, is like a lot of people who are not ready to grow up. I think secretly, that’s the most scary thing a lot of people have to deal with, when you become fully adult. Ralphie’s faced with taking on the mantle, really, and he really isn’t prepared for that. In a lot of ways, like a lot of us, at heart he’s still a kid.
Nick Schenk
How will Ralphie handle the new role? What other characters, old and new, will be around to complicate things for him? Find out when A Christmas Story Christmas will debut on HBO Max on November 17th.
HBO Max’s Dead Boy Detectives has added two more to its growing cast. Variety announced on Tuesday that Caitlin Reilly and Max Jenkins have joined the series in recurring roles. Reilly and Jenkins are set to play Litty and Kingham, respectively, with the characters being described as “tiny foul-mouthed dandelion sprites.”
Dead Boy Detectives was ordered to series back in April. The series is based on DC Comics characters created by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner. The Dead Boy Detectives, Edwin Payne and Charles Rowland, first made their live-action debut in the critically acclaimed Doom Patrol series. The roles were later recast for Dead Boy Detectives. In this series, George Rexstrew will play Edwin Payne, and Jayden Revri will play Charles Rowland. Other members of the cast include Kassius Nelson as Crystal Palace, Briana Cuoco as Jenny the Butcher, Ruth Connell as the Night Nurse, Yuyu Kitamura as Niko and Jenn Lyon as Esther.
The pilot episode was penned by Steve Yockey and directed by Lee Toland Krieger (Shadow andBone). Beth Schwartz will executive produce the series alongside Yockey, Jeremy Carver, and Greg Berlanti, and Sarah Schechter of Berlanti Productions.
The Last of Us video game was released in 2013 to unbelievably good reviews. Taking place in 2033, 20 years after a highly contagious fungus almost wipes out the entire population of the United States, it follows Joel, a man that lost his daughter when the outbreak first began, living his life with no real purpose until faced with the possibility of a cure. He then has to lead a young girl, Ellie, said to be immune, across the country in hopes of finding someone who can develop a vaccine from her unique set of antibodies.
In March 2020, it was announced that HBO was planning a TV show based on the events of the first and possibly second game of the series, and later that same year it was announced that the project had been officially picked up for a full season. A year later, we are getting confirmation of the series’ premiere date, which, according to the official HBO Max website/app, will take place on January 15, 2023.
The Last of Us HBO is premiering January 15th 2023!
The Last of Us will feature Pedro Pascal (Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian), Bella Ramsay (Game of Thrones), Gabriel Luna (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Terminator: Dark Fate), Nico Parker (Dumbo), Ana Torv (Fringe, Mindhunter), Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation, Devs) among others. Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaolalla is set to compose the score of the series, after being the one to score both the original game and its sequel. Neil Druckman, who directed both games, will also return to The Last of Us‘ world to write the entirety of the first season, alongside Craig Mazin, which will consist of ten episodes.
Cristin Milioti, who starred as Hazel Green in the HBO Max series Made for Love, has been cast as Sofia Falcone in the upcoming streaming series The Penguin. The series, which will also head to HBO Max, is part of The Batman director Matt Reeves’ growing Gotham-based universe of DC characters.
In the comics, Sofia is the daughter of crime boss Carmine Falcone, who was played by John Turturro in The Batman. The character was first introduced in Batman: The Long Halloween and went on to become a serial killer known as The Hangman who targeted members of Gotham PD.
According to Variety, Milioti’s character will be in a power struggle with Colin Farrell’s Penquin in the HBO Max series. Reeves is serving as an executive producer on the series while he continues to develop both a sequel to The Batman and other series, such as one based in Arkham Asylum. The Penguin will be written by showrunner Lauren LeFranc with Craig Zobel helming the first two episodes of the series which, according to Farrell, will consist of either 6 or 8 episodes.
After seeing how the Greens reacted upon learning of King Viserys’s death, acting on long-laid plans and instilling his son Aegon II as king, over Rhaenyra, Episode 10 took the story to Dragonstone.
The Black Council
The episode opened with Rhaenys serving as the bearer of bad news. Not only is Viserys dead, but Aegon had been named king in front of all of King’s Landing. Daemon point blank asked Rhaenys why she didn’t roast them alive when provided with the opportunity in the previous episode. Rhaenys said it wasn’t her war to start, which makes sense, but come on! They were right there!
The shocking news of her father’s death sent Rhaenyra into labor with her third child with Daemon. She wasn’t due for months, and sadly lost the baby. While this wasn’t the final straw for her to declare war on her childhood best friend and half-siblings, it was just another thing to blame on the Greens.
Rhaenyra was very restrained in the war council, asking if it’s her duty to hold the realm together, or to tear apart the country to get to her throne. This moved Rhaenys, and in turn garnered both her and Corlys’s support and fleet, providing one of many lords and armies she’ll need to take the Iron Throne.
Daemon
Our warmongering rogue prince got up to his usual shenanigans. He’s eager to show Westeros who is the rightful heir to the throne, and he is willing to use dragons to do so. Damon addressed the many dragons that are still unclaimed and stated that the Blacks needed to find riders for them. Even with Vhagar’s sheer size, the Blacks having 13 dragons vs the Greens having 4 would make this war short-lived. But we see later in this episode what a dragon can do to another dragon. Is it worth the cost?
A much-talked-about scene from the episode saw Daemon grab Rhaenyra by the throat and choke her. What forced this? We haven’t seen violence like this between Daemon and Rhaenyra, but he does have a history of murdering his wives. Well, turns out that even though Daemon was the heir before Rhaenyra was confirmed, he didn’t get all of the privileges that a Targaryen heir gets. He had no idea about Aegon the Conqueror’s vision, which is The Song of Ice and Fire (what the entire series is based on) when Rhaenyra brought it up. There’s a very good quote from Emma D’arcy, the actor that plays Rhaenyra, that might help explain the scene. “On the one hand, he can say that he doesn’t believe in prophecies. But he was never trusted to anyway.”
This revelation that he was never really considered as the heir sent him off to try and bring out some of the unclaimed dragons, and we see him singing to Vermithor, the dragon to King Jaehaerys, who ruled before Viserys. Expect to see a lot more of these unclaimed dragons in Season 2.
Storm’s End
Having read Fire and Blood, I knew that this scene was coming, and I knew that the show had to nail this sequence. Aegon being crowned isn’t the catalyst that drove the realm into war. A woman being named heir over a male isn’t the catalyst. It is simply a young man with a vendetta and a nuclear weapon at his disposal that he can’t control.
To set the scene, Rhaenyra was seeking to confirm who her allies are. By sending Jace north to the Vale, White Harbor, and Winterfell, as well as Luke being sent to Storm’s End, it sent a stronger message than just sending a raven. But when Luke gets to Storm’s End to treat with Borros Baratheon (who was chosen to lead, not to read), he finds Vhagar causing a ruckus outside, and Aemond the anime warrior with the sapphire eye already there. Luke was spurned by Baratheon and turned to leave to go back to Dragonstone. Aemond demanded justice, however, telling Luke to cut out his own eye and he’d let bygones be bygones. Borros stopped things and let Luke go. But he also let Aemond go.
If you’re reading this, you saw the dragon fight, if you want to call it that. Vhagar is at least 5 times the size of Arrax, and it was not much of a battle so much a light snack for the oldest dragon in Westeros. But it also proved to be a major deviation from the book, and it might have some effects on the main series, Game of Thrones. Both Arrax and Vhagar disobeyed their riders, with Arrax shooting flame at Vhagar, and Vhagar going after him and killing both Luke and Arrax. With both Aemond and Luke repeatedly screaming for their dragons to stop and obey, it recalls a warning given by Viserys throughout this season that dragons are something that the Targaryens trust in too much, being that they are still uncontrollable wild animals at their heart. That came to life here. Aemond meant to just intimidate his nephew, and instead he started a civil war that will tear apart the Seven Kingdoms.
Things to Come
With the dragons acting on their own will in the ending sequence, I hinted that this may have further effects on Game of Thrones, in particular, when Dany burns King’s Landing to the ground. Could House of the Dragon possibly be trying to retcon this action, by placing the blame on Drogon instead of Daenerys? Something to think about.
In Season 2, we’ll be seeing the Vale again, as well as Winterfell, where Jace will be traveling. We’ll also finally see Daeron, the third son of Viserys and Alicent, who has been in Oldtown for all of this season, along with his dragon Tessarion. He’ll have a large part to play in the coming war. Exciting things to come, and it was a great start to the show.
HBO Max is looking to redevelop its previously announced Green Lantern series. The show, which hailed from producer Greg Berlanti and writer Seth Grahame-Smith, was originally set to star Finn Wittrock (Ratched) and Jeremy Irvine (War Horse) as the respective Green Lanterns. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the new series will instead turn the focus over to John Stewart, one of DC’s first black superheroes.
Grahame-Smith has since departed the project after turning in eight scripts for the original series pitch. He was meant to serve as the showrunner on the project but ultimately chose to leave following the regime changes at HBO Max, Warner Bros. Television and DC Comics. A new showrunner has yet to be revealed. The decision to redevelop the series was reportedly made after Walter Hamada‘s recent exit, as prior to his exit, the use of John Stewart was said to be off-limits.
With the series being overhauled, only Berlanti and his banner, Berlanti Productions, remain attached through Warner Bros. Television. Per THR, Marc Guggenheim, who was originally involved with the series, left before the series was initially retooled. It is of note that this overhaul of the series does not stem from the massive changes underway at DC and DC Studios as James Gunn and Peter Safran do not begin their new jobs until Nov. 1st.
The Green Lantern series is now back in early development and is expected to be developed at a slower pace than the original series, which was being fast-tracked last year.
We’ve long wondered what exactly is happening with The Batman spinoff series focused on Arkham Asylum. While Colin Farrell‘s Penguin spinoff has recently started picking up speed, it seems that the untitled Arkham series is finally moving forward. Variety has shared that the creator of The Staircase, Antonio Campos, has joined the production as its showrunner. He will also act as executive producer and director for the series but only if his version gets the greenlight.
It should be noted that he’s the third writer to join the DC project, which has been announced all the way back in 2020. It originally started as a show focused on Gotham PD before it slowly merged into a project focused on the iconic insane asylum of Gotham. Terence Winter was originally attached to the project before Joe Barton took over, which was the point it took its current direction.
Matt Reeves is still attached to producing the series and he had hinted at it being a horror series that takes place in the same universe. There’s still no word if we should expect this project potentially acting as a sequel to the events of the first film or even as a prequel, especially with the untold story of how Barry Keoghan‘s Joker ended up in Arkham. Whatever direction the project takes, it’ll definitely be interesting and we’ll see if the project even starts rolling the cameras at some point.
The fourth season of Doom Patrol has added Elijah Rashad to its cast. The news was announced by Deadline, with the outlet reporting Reshad will play a recurring character named Deric. He’s said to be a “brilliant, community-minded robotics teacher” who soon finds his way pulled back into the life of his former best friend, Vic Stone.
Doom Patrol stars Brendan Fraser as Cliff Steele, Matt Bomer as Negative Man aka Larry Trainor, April Bowlby as Elasti-Woman aka Rita Farr, Diane Guerrero as Crazy Jane and Joivan Wade as Victor Stone aka Cyborg. The first three seasons of Doom Patrol are now streaming exclusively on HBO Max. Season 4 of Doom Patrol is set to return in December with two new episodes, before moving to a weekly format in January.
With House of the Dragon having aired its season finale, speculation has begun about how the Dance of the Dragons will be adapted onto the screen in the second season and beyond. After spending a season chock full of time jumps to build to this moment, it was the murder of Lucerys “Luke” Valeryon at the hands of Aemond Targaryan that officially launched the war that will tear Westeros in half. This is something that has been confirmed by showrunner Ryan Condal to always be the climactic event of the first season’s finale, though the nature of the events which occurred changed significantly in relation to the original book by George R.R. Martin, specifically the culpability of Aemond in Luke’s death. The series adaptation showcased more regret and anguish over Aemond’s rash decision. While discussing the finale with Variety, this is what Condal had to say about the change.
Historians have told us that Aemond intended to kill Luke, but I don’t think any of them could purport to know what was going on in Aemond’s head at the time. And I would also dispute the word “accident” a bit. I mean, Aemond got on his giant dragon and chased his nephew on his much smaller dragon through the clouds screaming and yelling at him, incensing his dragon and starting a fight. He didn’t know how Arrax or Luke were going to respond, and it ended in tragedy. I don’t think that was what Aemond intended when he threw his leg over the saddle, but he did a horrible, dangerous thing. That is the point: This is a war of many cuts that lead to a really, really bloody wound. It adds complexity and nuance to the character that’s potentially interesting. There’s lots of runway to go on with Aemond as a character and the story of the Dance. This is his first act as a dragon rider and a warrior and it’s gone very wrong. Now what happens as a result, and how does he respond? Those are the questions I’m interested in as a dramatist.
Ryan Condal
The change comes after the first season of House of the Dragon has taken some mild creative liberties from the original source material (with varied responses to them). A major component for the future of the series is the potential to travel to more realms of Westeros. After remaining relatively isolated into a select few locations, the showcase of the map in the finale certainly has illuminated interesting possibilities for fans to ponder. Ryan Condal had the following to say about what to expect from the show moving forward in terms of new locations.
The show definitely has to expand its scope in the second season. Just as the original “Game of Thrones” grew in scope and expanse as it went, so, too, will ours. We’ve lived a good bit in three different worlds through this show: King’s Landing, Dragonstone and Driftmark. I think those will continue to be the home bases for the show. But a war is coming that requires allegiances from different kingdoms and armies all over the map of Westeros. I don’t think we’re going to get quite as vast as the original “Game of Thrones” did in its final analysis. But there are definitely many more new worlds to come, and new worlds that you haven’t necessarily seen in the original show, either. Rest assured, plenty of scope to come.
Ryan Condal
The finale of the first season of House of the Dragon is available to watch on HBO and HBO Max. Production for the second season is said to begin at the start of 2023, though no official word has been said as to when it will air.
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