TV Shows

In the early days of Pokémon games, Pikachu used to be downright rotund by design, but the electric mouse gradually became skinner because that design was easier to animate.

Over the years, Nintendo’s alluded to Pikachu’s chunky past in a couple of clever ways, but none of them have been as delightful as the way the new Detective Pikachu animated short just says “screw it” and leans into that classic shunky Pikachu aesthetic.

Add Ted Lasso to the list of TV shows getting the Barbie treatment. Mattel’s offering three Barbie dolls based on the show’s wholesome characters. You can choose from Coach Ted, BFF Keeley, or the one I need, brick shith— err— AFC Richmond owner Rebecca Walton. The dolls are available right now, but it seems the Diamond Dogs have snapped them up already.

In a series of posts on X, the Screen Actors Guild announced yesterday evening that the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers invited it back to negotiations.

AMPTP walked away from talks earlier this month over its demand for two percent of streaming revenue. According to Variety, the union has amended that to 57 cents per year, per subscriber.

Yesterday marked the 100th day of the strike.

The film, Australia, is a big melodramatic epic starring Nicole Kidman as an English aristocrat running a cattle station and Hugh Jackman as the dreamy drover who helps her. The new miniseries, Faraway Downs, will add over an hour of new footage and a whole new ending when it premieres on Hulu as a six-part mini-series on November 26.

“I got the idea and started to relook at the footage and realized I’ve shot enough to do it as episodic storytelling through a revisiting of the piece, not necessarily as a better film than Australia, but a different variation on the themes,” Luhrmann told The Wrap.

The Pokémon franchise has always emphasized how, in addition to being powerful brawlers, pocket monsters are intelligent beings with complex feelings. In the past, the Pokémon anime has framed trainers who don’t understand that as villains incapable of becoming true champions.

But Pokémon: Paldean Winds’ latest episode is all about how even the best battlers sometimes have to be reminded that pokémon — especially their starters — are friends first, and fighters second.

Only Netflix knows why it didn’t kick off this year’s Geeked Week with these new looks at the cast of its live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

But if these stills of Prince Zuko (Dallas Liu), Princess Azula (Elizabeth Yu), their father Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim), and his brother Iroh (Paul Sun-Hyung Lee) are any indication, The Last Airbender is absolutely going to clear in the production design / costuming departments. Hopefully, that’ll be true of all the VFX, too.

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Netflix’s anime take on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels, looks great translated to moving pictures in its first full trailer.

Netflix posted to its YouTube channel yesterday. This one focuses more on the show’s fights than the August teaser. You can tell because it uses that one song from Mortal Kombat. Except with new words and stuff.

Amazon’s Prime Video announced yesterday that the trailer is now on YouTube after showing it off at New York Comic Con.

It’s not long until the season’s November 3rd debut. But if you’re eager to get your fix (and haven’t seen it yet), check out the 47-minute Invincible Atom Eve episode that Prime Video put up in July.

And by that I mean watching and playing spooky things. Luckily there’s a great option this week with The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix. (If you’re looking for more modern horror, we’ve got you covered.)

Elsewhere, season 7 of Rick and Morty premieres on Sunday, and the excellent sci-fi series Scavengers Reign is now streaming on Max. Otherwise: get ready for a very busy week in video games coming up.

It’s the scariest day of the year, so find something appropriately scary to watch or play. Here are some recommendations from us.

but the trailer is closer. Apple TV Plus just dropped it at New York Comic Con and its everything you’ve come to expect from the truly excellent alternate history show that explores a US space program that finds water on the Moon and eventually founds a colony on Mars. That means really entertaining science fiction and some dodgy looking old age make up.

This season is set in the early 2000s and focused on the expansion of the Martian Colony. But I’m particularly interested to see how it explores Apple’s 2000s history through props. In a universe where the iPod existed in the early 90s where has Apple gone ten years later?

Star Trek Prodigy has completed its voyage home, landing safely on Netflix. The adorable kid-friendly Star Trek series aired one season on Paramount + and Nickelodeon starting in late 2021, but got the axe this June despite having its second season largely in the can.

Trek fans, being not new to this problem, launched a fan campaign over the summer begging other streamers, including Netflix, to take up the mantle — and, apparently, won. Prodigy’s first season will hit Netflix later this year, and my 10-year-old can continue shipping Dal and Gwyn with new episodes launching sometime in 2024.

Which means a lot of BBC shows like the classic superhero dark comedy Misfits and the very funny sketch comedy The Catherine Tate Show will be available for free to watch provided you can sit through the ads.

Its kind of wild how when these shows aired in the late 2000s and early 2010s they were virtually impossible to get in the U.S. unless you forked over money for cable TV and patiently waited for BBC America to air them. Now you can get them for free via FAST TV.

Deadline reported that DreamWorks Animation made the cuts because of business downturn, increased costs, and the strikes that went on for much of this year.

A spokesperson for the company told Deadline that “approximately 70 positions” were cut, spread across its corporate infrastructure, as well as films, TV, and technology departments.

The busy month of October has begun.

On the streaming side, it’s a big week on Disney Plus, with the premiere of Loki season 2 and the finale of Ahsoka. Meanwhile, the slasher spoof Totally Killer is on Prime Video, Our Flag Means Death has a new season on Max, and the third season of Only Murders in the Building just wrapped up on Hulu.

As for games, Assassin’s Creed is back with Mirage, Detective Pikachu returns in... Detective Pikachu Returns, and if you bought the premium edition you now have early access to Forza Motorsport.

That’s Tom Hiddleston, speaking to The Verge just ahead of the premiere of the first season of Loki on Disney Plus in 2021. It’s an interesting conversation — touching on everything from Loki lectures to the existence of free will — and it’s especially fun to revisit it as the show’s second season starts streaming today.