Recently, we heard discussions about the original Avengers returning to the MCU, saw a Mean Girls sequel (kind of), and learned the secrets of Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 post-credits scenes and Easter eggs. But in the mix of all of that, there have been some truly exciting announcements and reveals we wouldn’t want you to miss out on.
Here are some of our favorite pop-culture news odds & ends from this week.
This Week’s Odds & Ends in News
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- Horror Sequels Galore! The Black Phone 2 Will See Return of Original Cast, Terrifier 3 Sets Release Date and Shares Teaser, and It Follows 2 Is On the Way
- Another John Wick Spinoff Show and an Anime Series Are Apparently In Development
- Poltergeist TV Series Is in Development at Amazon MGM Studios
- Disney+’s Cancelled Captain Nemo TV Series Nautilus Saved By AMC
- The Fall of the House of Usher Prop Auction Invites You to Purchase Something Haunted and Stylish
- Bratz Dressed Up as Barbie for Halloween, and Rick and Morty Dressed as Five Nights at Freddy’s
- The Boys Will Likely Have More Seasons Than Originally Planned
- Sesame Street Is Changing Its Format to Include “More Peril”
- Fourth Wing TV Series in the Works From Amazon and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society
- Jurassic World LEGO Sets Are Roaring to Life in January 2024
Horror Sequels Galore! The Black Phone 2 Will See Return of Original Cast, Terrifier 3 Sets Release Date and Shares Teaser, and It Follows 2 Is On the Way
Fall may be drawing to a close, but Halloween season never is. And it’s a good thing, too, because a ton of horror sequels are coming our way.
The truly terrifying Universal and Blumhouse movie, The Black Phone, is set for a sequel. The Black Phone 2 will release on June 27, 2025 and, per Variety, it will be the “launch of a sinister new franchise.”
We don’t yet know much about what The Black Phone 2 will entail, but in a fascinating turn of events, The Black Phone‘s original cast will all return for more scary calls. Yes, Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, Jeremy Davies, and Miguel Mora will all return for the sequel terror. Scott Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill will also return to write The Black Phone 2. We have chills already.
Terrifier 3 and its terrifying slasher Art the Clown will arrive in theaters on October 25, 2024, for another round of Christmas horror. We can’t wait to see what terrifying naughty-list mayhem will transpire.
To get us into the holiday spirit, Terrifier 3 has shared its first teaser trailer, and it’s certainly festive. Santa who? A release further shares of Terrifier 3, “The upcoming installment will be Christmas-themed, adding an extra layer of anticipation for horror enthusiasts. In the third installment of Damien Leone’s breakout horror film, Art the Clown is set to unleash chaos on the unsuspecting residents of Miles County as they peacefully drift off to sleep on Christmas Eve.” We’ll be seeing this Saint Nick in our dreams tonight.
It Follows will also receive a sequel titled They Follow. The writer and director of It Follows, David Robert Mitchell, will return for the sequel alongside star Maika Monroe. It Follows was a movie that encapsulated the terrifying feeling of someone always lurking behind you, and we bet its sequel will double the sensation.
In case you were curious, we’ve broken down the horoscopes of 12 iconic horror villains.
Another John Wick Spinoff TV and an Anime Series Are Apparently In Development
Surprise! Another John Wick spinoff series is apparently in development, according to John Wick director Chad Stahelski. And that’s not all, a John Wick anime is in the works as well. Stahelski noted to Collider, “We’re doing a John Wick TV show, which, again, keeps my head going.” And added, “I would love to do a couple of episodes of the TV show just because I think I’d have fun trying things that we didn’t get to try in the films. I mean, absolutely. There’s some great ideas. And to work with a different cast and a different story structure without John Wick, it would be a fun challenge.”
He also shared with The Discourse podcast, which we saw via IGN, that “Lionsgate is having us develop the John Wick TV show, so we thought we could explore The High Table in that a little bit.” But confirmed this was separate to The Continental. Stahelski noted, “Yeah, I love Donnie [Yen], I love Rina [Sawayama], love the Tracker (Shamier Anderson), and the TV show and the ancillaries will give us a chance to expand the kind of fun world we’ve created… It doesn’t have to be John Wick, the character specific, you know what I mean, so that we can explore all that stuff.” Of course, which, if any of these characters would stare in a new John Wick TV series has not yet been confirmed.
On top of that, Stahelski broke the news that a John Wick anime is also in development. He shared, “We’re doing that and a Japanese anime because I love Japanese anime so much… So to create all the cool stories that anime could achieve better than we could and the TV show to expand our world, we’ll still get our fix, you know what I mean? And we’ll still have all the fun.” We guess we’ll stay tuned to see what develops.
As if that weren’t enough John Wick, John Wick 5 is still on the table.
Poltergeist TV Series Is in Development at Amazon MGM Studios
You can never be free of some ghosts. Variety reports a series adaptation of the classic ’80s movie Poltergeist is in the works at Amazon MGM Studios. Currently, no plot details or writers are attached to the series. However, we know “Darryl Frank and Justin Falvey will executive produce on behalf of Amblin Television.” In 1999, Showtime released a four-season series adaptation set in Poltergiest‘s world—but television has come a long way since.
For more horror-based TV, check out what we know about Max’s The Conjuring show.
Disney+’s Cancelled Captain Nemo TV Series Nautilus Saved By AMC
In a worrying streaming trend, shows are being ordered and completed only to be canceled before release. But sometimes, there is good news. Deadline reports that although Disney+ canceled its Nautilus series, a 10-episode TV show based on Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, AMC has now saved the series. Nautilus will air on AMC and AMC+ in 2024 and tell the origin story of the iconic Captain Nemo.
To see what we learned about Nautilus initially, check out our write-up here:
The Fall of the House of Usher Prop Auction Invites You to Purchase Something Haunted and Stylish
Mike Flanagan’s final show with Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher, was filled with horrifying yet beautiful visuals. If you loved the show’s aesthetic, you can now take a part of it home with a special prop auction.
The Fall of the House of Usher auction will take place from November 15-29 with 100% of its proceeds going to charity. Among other items, you can bid on “Verna’s (Carla Gugino) Rave Costume with Red Cloak,” “Napoleon ‘Leo’ Usher’s (Rahul Kohli) Drywall-Covered ‘Thor’ Hammer Replica,” and “Arthur Pym’s (Mark Hamill) Briefcase with Files and Accessories.”
For more about The Fall of the House of Usher‘s aesthetic, take a look at what its use of color really means.
Bratz Dressed Up as Barbie for Halloween, and Rick and Morty Dressed as Five Nights at Freddy’s
Happy Halloween from our favorite franchises. In a bit of a shady move, some Bratz dolls dressed as the unimpressed teens looking at Barbie for Halloween—a truly hilarious spin on a Barbie movie costume which was, admittedly, very popular this year.
Meanwhile, Rick and Morty‘s characters disguised themselves as Five Nights at Freddy’s animatronics, homaging the popular game series that just released its movie adaptation. We love series dressing as series!
If you enjoyed Five Nights at Freddy‘s, you may be wondering what that sound at the end of the credits means.
The Boys Will Likely Have More Seasons Than Originally Planned
The Boys showrunner Eric Kripke originally planned for the series to have a five-season run. But it looks like that number is now defunct, and The Boys will likely have more seasons than that. Kripke shared with Inverse, “I have since realized that literally, no one in history is worse at predicting the amount of seasons of a show, like literally. I have learned my lesson, and I’ve stopped predicting how many seasons these shows go. You will find out in hindsight.” With the popularity of The Boys and its spinoff Gen V, that seems like a fair assessment to us.
Catch up with Gen V‘s most gory and shocking moments, here:
Sesame Street Is Changing Its Format to Include “More Peril”
Sesame Street wants you to know you can reinvent yourself at any age. Recently, The Hollywood Reporter revealed Sesame Street‘s format would be “reimagined” for season 56. The show will drop its “magazine style” format, which has been around for decades, in favor of “two longer, more narrative-driven segments, which will be paired with a new animated series, Tales From 123.”
Wilson Stallings, the executive VP and chief creative development and production officer for Sesame Workshop shared, “Kids love a little bit of peril, they love having emotional stakes, and in nine minutes, it’s kind of hard to really dive into those areas really effectively.” The show hopes to be able to tell a more compelling tale with these changes.
Be that as it may, we have to wonder, does Sesame Street really need more peril?
All we have to say is that Sesame Street had better keep gems like this.
Fourth Wing TV Series in the Works From Amazon and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society
Amazon MGM Studios and Michael B. Jordan’s Outlier Society will be bringing to life a TV series based on Rebecca Yarros’ popular fantasy series, Fourth Wing. This overall deal includes all the books from the Fourth Wing universe titled The Empyrean, including its sequel Iron Flame, releasing on November 7, and the three books slated to follow.
Per Variety, the logline for the TV series shares:
Enter the brutal world of Basgiath War College where there is only one rule: Graduate or Die. Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail expected to live a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general― her tough-as-talons mother―has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. If the fire-breathing beasts don’t kill her, one of her fellow riders just might. Suspense, action, romance, and dragons blend together in a propulsive fantasy adventure from NYT bestselling author Rebecca Yarros.
In other fantasy novel adaptation news, House of the Dragon season two will release in the summer of 2024.
Jurassic World LEGO Sets Are Roaring to Life in January 2024
Show off your dino love with these two new Jurassic World LEGO sets. First up is a Dinosaur Fossils: T. rex Skull LEGO set, which turns LEGOs into bones. The official description of the set shares, “The first Jurassic World set made for display features a skull with an opening jaw, a stand with an information plaque, a hidden ‘amber’ piece at the back of the model and a ‘fossilized’ footprint.” Honestly, building a T. rex skull out of LEGOS, teeth and all, is pretty cool.
Also available is the “ Baby Dinosaur Rescue Center” LEGO set and it comes complete with a bunch of, you guessed it, baby dinos. D’aww. Both Jurrasic World LEGO sets will release on January 1, 2024.
For more creative and nature-focused LEGO fun, check out LEGO’s insect collection.