Don’t worry. Waititi knows it’s kind of a wild idea: “What I wanted to do from the beginning was to ask: ‘What are people expecting the least from this franchise?’ Oh, I know – a full-blown love story!” Waititi told Wired earlier this week. The Kiwi director, who also helmed Ragnarok, has never been one to do the expected. Waititi (who didn’t write the script for Ragnarok) co-wrote the script for Thor: Love and Thunder alongside Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, who seems like the perfect teammate for Waititi....

Join the Den of Geek Book Club! Top New Horror Books in December 2020 The Blade Between by Sam J Miller Type: NovelPublisher: Ecco Press Release date: December 1 Den of Geek says: The mixing of modern concerns (gentrification, commercialisation) with ancient spirits is an appealing concept for a novel which sounds like not a haunted house story, but a whole haunted city. Sam J. Miller grew up in Hudson, where the story is set so this is likely to be a personal piece – he’s won several awards for his writing so we’d expect good things....

Star Wars: Ronin Type: Novel Publisher: Del ReyRelease date: Oct. 12Den of Geek says: Candon’s debut novel brings Star Wars into a new dimension with an expansion on the short anime episode “The Duel” in Star Wars: Visions. Taking place as if one step aside from the universe we know and love, it’s an inventive and thoughtful story that also never forgets the initial concept: that a samurai Sith is very cool....

While October predictably saw a glut of horror releases during the lead-up to Halloween, November has a decent share of the scary stuff as well. Horror has historically been a reliable genre both at the box office (under normal circumstances) and in the digital space, so it probably makes sense that even in these compromised times, scary movies are still coming at us hard and fast as we approach Thanksgiving and the year-end holiday season....

So for film lovers, the choice of what to watch (and how to view it) remains more varied than ever. Here’s a guide to what’s coming up in February: A Glitch in the Matrix February 5 After chronicling the oddest of oddball theories regarding Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining in the documentary Room 237, filmmaker Rodney Ascher is back to take on sci-fi classic The Matrix. In truth, the idea of there being a “glitch in the Matrix” predates the Wachowskis’ 1999 movie, but the duo mainstreamed the idea that we all live in a simulation....

Valorant’s tactical shooter gameplay will remind many of Counter-Strike, but the game’s Agent system really sets it apart from Valve’s multiplayer shooter masterpiece. While it will probably take you quite a while to really learn the ropes in Valorant, the good news is that it’s certainly possible to learn to excel with any of the game’s Agents. Indeed, your choice of Agent is typically more dependent on the current map, the rest of your team’s composition, and what you ultimately feel most comfortable with rather than their “objective” power level....

Venom: Let There Be Carnage not only enjoyed a $90.1 million domestic box office opening, but—as viewers who stayed behind for the credits found out—it successfully lived up to its titular declaration far beyond an eponymous villain. Indeed, the sequel’s post-credits scene not only set a vexed Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock toward his next big screen exploits, but gave the Sony-spun Marvel franchise the Spider-Man-connected christening it had long required....

A great deal happened in the latest Vigil episode. DC Longacre declared a joint investigation into the muhduhs of Craig Burke and Jade Antoniak, and discovered a major Royal Navy cover-up. DCI Silva discovered that CPO Glover and Lt. Doherty have been secretly having it off. Poor engineer Gary Walsh almost shot himself. MI5 showed up. As did the US Navy. And everybody sang a hymn. If you’re still unsure how it all fits together, join us in getting the story straight and putting our speculation hats on below....

Vikings Season 5 Episode 4 “I didn’t come here to make peace. I came here to make trouble.” This is one of those instances that after a period of intense action, Vikings wisely steps away and takes a moment to breathe as each of the major players reevaluate their individual situations and make plans to strike out in new directions. While the overall intent of the story arcs remains the same, “The Plan” sets out to remind viewers that these are men and women of action, and once again manages to provide a reasonable amount of attention to each....

After eight near-perfect episodes, the story of WandaVision has concluded with a finale installment that sticks the landing on all fronts, including multiple cinematic battles, several heartfelt goodbyes, and a long-overdue moment of agency for a heroine who has so often been denied a choice in her own future. But while “The Series Finale” is a deeply satisfying coda to what is probably Marvel’s most emotionally gratifying outing to date, it leaves us with more than a few questions about where these characters go from here....

And, if nothing else, War for the Planet of the Apes does succeed in its task of turning Andy Serkis’ Caesar into a figure of immense gravitas. After three movies, the most profound of which had Reeves in the director’s chair, Serkis and the filmmakers are prepared to make no concessions for a human co-leading protagonist, nor worry about audience expectations for upbeat escapism. For like other demigod mythos, Caesar and his civilization of apes will spend an awful lot of time in the underworld—a realm of man that sees the eponymous conflict as a war of attrition....

Thanks to the current state of the world, I haven’t been to central London in over a year despite living just eight miles from Big Ben. Returning to a virtual version of the UK capital via Watch Dogs: Legion, it’s pretty clear things aren’t quite how I remember them. True, that’s partially because real-life London isn’t a surveillance state run by a private military company, but also because I don’t remember the city being so damned pretty....

Things have changed for the Staten Island vampires on What We Do in the Shadows season 3 as they step into positions of power. This may not make much of a difference for Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), whose new job as secretary of the Vampiric Council, is much like his fake job, at a cubicle in an office. But Laszlo (Matt Berry) may spend a little more in the potting shed....

After much speculation, we finally know the name of the next two Avengers movies! Scheduled for release in 2025, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars will cap off Phase Six of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which begins with Fantastic Four in 2024. We’ve known for some time that Kang the Conqueror, played by Jonathan Majors, will be the prime villain of the next MCU arc, now titled the Multiverse Saga....

The Musicians There are no session notes on the musicians who played on the title song of the Netflix film. Indeed, when Den of Geek sat down with the cast of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom actor Glynn Turman told us, “We found photographs of her band members, but that was the closest and most detailed information that we had. Not so much as any particular story about any one of the band members, but we did see photographs of the groups, and the sometimes different groups....

Series creator Rolin Jones is lovingly and painstakingly adapting Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire to a faithful recreation of the novels while reframing the story. Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) is no longer the white, slave-owning plantation runner, but a well-connected, closeted Black man in the deep south of the early jazz age. Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid) is not quite the cruel mentor, tossing his protégé into undeath with callous disregard, but a true lover and soulless soulmate....

But even as the MCU continues to improve its roster of villains, there’s one irreplaceable bad guy fans are dying to see: the ruler of Latveria, Dr. Victor von Doom. Doom’s Marvel Origin Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, Doctor Doom made his first appearance in 1962’s Fantastic Four #5, immediately establishing himself as a formidable threat, with his green tunic and metallic mask. The six decades that followed only further established the greatness of Doom, keeping intact his melodramatic, third-person speech and penchant for robotic clones, while adding rich backstory and moral complexity....

With the possible exception of Janice Rand, Nurse Christine Chapel is the most underused character from the original Star Trek. Played by Majel Barrett, who originated the role of Captain Pike’s XO Number One, and later played Deanna Troi’s mother Lwaxana and the voiced Starfleet computers in the 90s series, Nurse Chapel was a reoccurring character in the original series. Despite her constant presence, Chapel never got much attention from writers....

“This was about a 10-year process,” Reese tells Den of Geek on a Zoom chat witth Wernick by his side. “It took almost 10 years to get when that thing was brought to us until the movie was on the screen.” That thing is “Escape from Spiderhead,” a short story penned by acclaimed literary fiction writer and essayist George Saunders. The original story, published by The New Yorker in 2010, is about a man named Jeff who is sent to an experimental prison after he kills someone....

In 2013, Helen Wan published the acclaimed novel Partner Track and Netflix has officially brought the words to life in a new series starring Arden Cho. All 10 episodes of the first season are now streaming. The story follows Ingrid Yun, a first-generation Korean American and the first lawyer in her family, and showcases the trials and tribulations of excelling at the prestigious (but old school) law firm, Parsons Valentine....