News Around the Net: October, 2026
As always, let’s start with some trailers. Here’s a pretty epic-looking trailer for season three of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power:
It’s exciting to see this show finally getting to the real meat of this prequel story, with Sauron forging the One Ring! I love seeing all the action in that trailer. Here’s hoping the show, which I like, takes a big step up this season.
The Further Misadventures of Cliff Booth is almost here!!
I cannot wait for this. I just recently rewatched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and I am pumped for this.
This is a banger of a trailer for the new animated feature directed by Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille), Ray Gunn:
That looks dynamite. I love the combination of silly and adult elements, and the animation is absolutely gorgeous.
This trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew isn’t at all what I’d expected, but I love it for that:
I love the strange spin that Ms. Gerwig is giving to her Narnia film! This looks like a blast! I love the use of Stairway to Heaven to score the trailer (click here for more info on how that came to be), and the glam rock goddess look of the White Witch was such an unexpected choice!! I am digging the vibe of this. I hope it’s good.
Here’s a trailer for Mr. Irrelevant:
That looks like it could be interesting! I’m happy to see David Corenswet, who was so fantastic in James Gunn’s Superman, in another starring role.
As a Star Trek fan, I’m intrigued to see both Colm Meaney (Chief Miles Edward O’Brien) and Kate Mulgrey (Captain Janeway) sharing the screen in this trailer for The Galway Bay Murders:
I hope that’ll be available to stream in the U.S. sometime soon.
John Wilson (of How To with John Wilson) has a new movie out, and why have I not seen it already?? For now, let’s settle for this glorious trailer:
I believe it’s going to be available on V.O.D. in November, and I can’t wait. For all you John Wilson fans out there, here’s a fantastic 12-minute piece on him from the Museum of Modern Art:
Here’s another movie that is already out that I need to see as soon as I can, Chris Rock’s Misty Green:
I loved Top Five, the last film that Chris Rock directed, way back in 2014. I’ve been waiting for his next film for forever. I hope to see this soon.
This is an interesting trailer for By Any Means, starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Mark Wahlberg:
I really enjoy Mr. Abdul-Mateen’s work. Mark Wahlkberg is more hit and miss for me (and his facial prosthetics look weird to me). But I’m curious to see if this is any good…
There have been some sad losses recently; let’s start with the passing of Walter Koenig, who of course played Pavel Chekov on Star Trek. Mr. Koenig was a wonderful presence on Star Trek through the years, and of course I also loved him as the villainous Bester on Babylon 5. I wish he’d gotten more of a chance to shine on-screen over the decades. Mr. Koenig was also a fine writer, and in recent years he was a wonderfully irascible presence at Star Trek conventions and when being interviewed for documentaries such as The Center Seat and In Search of Tomorrow, and in interviews on podcasts like The Inglorious Treksperts. He’ll be missed. It’s sad that there now remain only two surviving members of the main cast of the original Star Trek: William Shatner & George Takei. May they both be around for a good long while yet! Click here to read a number of beautiful tributes to Mr. Koenig.
I’d only recently discovered the extraordinarily talented voice performance Eric Bauza. He blew me away when performing Jar-Jar Binks as Daffy Duck on a recent live staged reading of the script for Star Wars: Episode I. (Click here to watch and enjoy!!) Mr. Bauza has been the voice of most of the major Looney Tunes characters for the past number of years, most recently in Coyote vs. Acme, where he delivered absolutely perfect renditions of so many characters. Finally there was a worthy successor to the great Mel Blanc. Sadly, Mr. Bauza passed away at the young age of only 46. What a loss.
Then there is RJ Mitte, who played Walter Jr. on Breaking Bad, who died at only 34. Mr. Mitte was a key part of Breaking Bad. Like his character on the show, he had cerebral palsy. Such a sad loss.
But oy, there have been other recent losses too, such as Richard Riehle. You might not recognize his name, but I bet you’d recognize his face and voice. Mr. Riehle played Tom Smykowski in Office Space — the guy who is so happy to get hit by a car because that means he doesn’t have to go back to work. He played a guard transporting Harrison Ford’s Dr. Richard Kimble on the prison bus in The Fugitive; he played Batai in the classic Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Inner Light”; he was in Bridesmaids, in the scene in which Kristen Wiig gets drunk on the plane. I’ve barely scratched the surface of his long career. What a great character actor!
We also recently lost Tom Skerritt, who for me will always be Captain Dallas in the original Alien. He was a marvelous performer who appeared in so many movies & TV shows over the years, including M*A*S*H, Top Gun, Cheers (where he was Rebecca’s former boss) and Picket Fences.
There’s been some fascinating (and sad) drama happening recently with Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II. Mr. Reeves is apparently facing some sort of personal family issue. (This seems to be connected to whatever the issues were that resulted in the long delays in Mr. Reeves’ being able to finish writing the script for this sequel to 2022’s The Batman.) As a result, Mr. Reeves had to leave the set and the movie was temporarily shut down. But production has resumed, with Steven Soderbergh stepping in to complete filming, in coordination with Mr. Reeves. Rather that reworking the film (as happened, for instance, in the disastrous chain of events that spun out of Zack Snyder’s stepping away from the Justice League movie and Joss Whedon’s being brought in), Mr. Soderbergh has declared his commitment to being as faithful as possible to Mr. Reeves’ style and intentions. This feels like the best possible outcome of what seems like a sad situation. What a kind act by Steven Soderbergh. Mr. Soderbergh is an enormous talent, and his skill in shifting his own style and approach gives me complete confidence that he can succeed in completing filming on The Batman Part II in a way that will fit smoothly with the work Mr. Reeves did. I hope all is OK for Mr. Reeves and his family… and I cannot wait to see this long-delayed movie!
I am thrilled that, after years of reports, Ryan Coogler’s reboot of The X-Files has been picked up for a series order by Hulu! I cannot wait to see this!
The DCU overseen by James Gunn is continuing ahead, with the announcement of a new TV series: The People v. Gorilla Grodd, with Skyler Gisondo reprising his role from Superman as Jimmy Olsen. A TV show with Jimmy Olsen and a talking supervillain gorilla?? I am all in on this; though what a strange choice to make!! I hope it’s good!
In Marvel news, I’m disappointed but not surprised that Daredevil: Born Again is ending with season three. I feel like that show never hit the level of quality I’d been hoping for, despite an incredible cast. That show was from the beginning beset with creative challenges — they basically started over after shooting half of the first season — and now we hear that the show-runner brought in to revamp season one and run season two is not involved with season three. Sigh. I’d love for them to wrap this show up but relaunch it as a new Daredevil show with a new subtitle and a different creative team behind the scenes. But with Marvel/Disney seeming to be winding down their TV shows, I am doubtful that will ever happen.
There’s a cool rumor that Marvel is planning to re-release Spider-Man: Brand New Day back into theaters with deleted scenes added back in… possibly including the scene featuring Rosario Dawson, reprising her role as Claire from all the Marvel Netflix shows!! That would be so fun — I’d love to get to see that Claire scene!
I’m sad that A Man on the Inside is also ending after its upcoming season three, though I’m also happy to hear that the show will have one more season! I quite enjoyed the first two seasons (I need to write about them soon!), even though I feel like they seemed to stay under the pop culture radar. I’d assumed the show was finished after season two, so I am happy we’ll be getting one more batch of episodes.
In more positive TV news, I was happy to read that the Reacher spin-off Neagley was renewed for a second season. (I need to find time to watch season one!)
I’m also happy to see that the new Avatar: The last Airbender TV show, Seven Havens, was renewed for seasons 3 & 4, allowing the creators to complete their planned story. I watched the new Avatar animated movie, but I haven’t yet started Seven Havens — I hope to get to it soon. (I need more time in my days!!)
Antonia Banderas and Nic Cage will be starring in the fifth season of True Detective?? That’s such a strange pairing — I love it! I have enjoyed every season of True Detective, and season four was particularly great (and, I think, under-seen, so give it a shot if you’re reading this and you skipped it). I’m especially happy that Issa López, who ran season four, is returning for season five.
I recently watched the finale of season 14 of Futurama, which has been on Hulu for the past few years. It’s a great season, and I’ll be writing about it here soon. The show apparently is ending as a series on Hulu, although they are still producing three movie-length specials that will be coming down the road. So it’s yet another maybe-series finale for Futurama, which has ended and then been revived six or seven times already over the course of the show’s miraculous run. Matt Groening had some interesting comments on the matter for Variety.
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