Occultist tries to imprison Death in first The Sandman teaser

[Karlston]

Plus new peeks at Stranger Things S4, Cowboy Bebop, The Witcher S2, Army of Thieves.

Tom Sturridge stars as Dream/Morpheus in the Netflix adapted series, The Sandman.

It has been a long time coming, but we finally have our first glimpse of footage from The Sandman, Netflix's adaptation of the DC Comics graphic novels created by Neil Gaiman. The streaming giant also released several character posters for the series during its Tudum global fan event. And in addition to The Sandman, we got a tantalizing new teaser for Stranger Things S4, the opening credits for Cowboy Bebop, and new trailers for Army of Thieves and The Witcher S2, among other goodies.

The Sandman teaser

As I've written previously, the titular "sandman" is Dream, aka Morpheus, among other names. He is one of seven entities known as the Endless, and he is seeking to set right his past mistakes. The other Endless are Destiny, Destruction, Despair, Desire, Delirium, and Death (portrayed as a perky punk/goth young woman). They became almost as popular as Dream himself (especially Death) and were featured in several spinoff comics. The series opens when Morpheus, the King of Dreams, escapes from a 70-year imprisonment by an occultist—who actually wanted to capture Dream's sibling Death but trapped the Sandman by mistake.

 

Gaiman has been heavily involved with this Netflix adaptation, which bodes well for the project. Tom Sturridge snagged the coveted role of Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, no doubt due in part to his well-sculpted cheekbones. As for Dream's Endless Siblings, Kirby Howell-Baptiste plays Death, Donna Preston plays Despair, and Mason Alexander Park plays Desire. Game of Thrones alums Gwendoline Christie and Charles Dance play a gender-swapped Lucifer and the charlatan magician Roderick Burgess, respectively. (Burgess is styled after real-life occultist Aleister Crowley and is Crowley's arch-rival within the world of DC Comics.)

 

The cast also includes Boyd Holbrook as The Corinthian, one of the (failed) nightmares created by Dream; Vivienne Acheampong as a gender-swapped Lucienne, chief librarian of the Dreaming; David Thewlis as John Dee/Doctor Destiny; Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine, occult detective and ancestor of DC Comics antihero John Constantine; Patton Oswalt as the voice of Dream's raven emissary, Matthew; Razane Jammal as Lyta Hall; Kyo Ra as Rose Walker, who encounters the Corinthian while searching for her lost brother; Stephen Fry as Rose's guardian, Gilbert; Sandra James-Young as Unity Kinkaid; and Sanjeev Bhaskar and Asim Chaudhry as Cain and Abel, respectively.

 

Dream's initial capture by Roderick Burgess and his acolytes is the focus of this brief first-look teaser. We see Dance's Burgess and Co. gathering for a dark ritual. "Tonight we will achieve what no one has ever attempted: We will summon and imprison Death," Burgess proclaims. There's some spooky chanting, a blood offering, a few mystical artifacts ("a coin made from stone," "a feather pulled from an angel's wing"), and voila! Except we all know the spell didn't work as planned, and they capture Death's sibling, Dream, instead. (That shot of a robed and masked Morpheus in the center of the circle is iconic.) The final image shows a caged (shirtless) Morpheus glowering as an off-camera voice says, "You're gonna need all the help you can get."

 

Netflix has yet to announce an official premiere date for The Sandman. It was rumored to be dropping late this year, but I wouldn't be surprised if it gets pushed into early 2022. Regardless, color me excited to see more.

Stranger Things S4 teaser

It's a blast from a haunted past in new teaser for Strange Things S4.

Netflix dropped a teaser for the fourth season of Stranger Things back in May, hinting strongly at the return of Eleven 's (Millie Bobby Brown) childhood tormenter and "Papa," Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine). And we already knew that David Harbour will be returning as Hopper, along with the rest of the main cast: Winona Ryder, Finn Wolfhard, Natalia Dyer, Noah Schnapp, Charlie Heaton, Joe Keery, Caleb McLaughlin, and Sadie Sink. We also know it will be the first season to take place largely outside of Hawkins, since Eleven and the Byers have moved away, and Hopper seems to be imprisoned by the Russians.

 

Maya Thurman-Hawke returns as Robin, Brett Gelman will be back as Murray Bauman, Cara Buono returns as the Wheeler matriarch, and we'll be seeing more of Priah Ferguson, who plays Lucas' sassy younger sister, Erica. Among the new cast members is Robert Englund of Nightmare on Elm Street fame, which is a nice little link to classic '80s horror.

 

This S4 teaser is very different, tonally speaking, from what we've seen thus far. It conjures up a haunted house and some major Scooby Doo vibes. It opens with a '50s-era family moving into a large mansion known as Creed House. But all is not hunky dory: there are strange sounds, flickering lights, and the occasional disemboweled cat left by the porch. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of the two children lying (presumably) dead on the floor, hinting at tragedy. Then we cut to the present, in which the Hawkins gang explores the now-abandoned house for "clues." (Nobody appreciates Dustin's Sherlock Holmes reference.) What does this have to do with seasons past? The final shot features a ticking grandfather clock, and then suddenly it's ticking in... the Upside Down.

 

We don't yet have a premier date for Stranger Things S4, but expect it to drop sometime next year.

Cowboy Bebop opening credits

Opening credits for Cowboy Bebop.

As Ars Senior Reviews Editor Sam Axon wrote last month, when the first images dropped, "Cowboy Bebop [the original anime series] originally premiered in 1998. It's a space western about a group of bounty hunters on a spaceship called the Bebop. It drew critical acclaim and became a cult hit thanks in part to its striking visual style and its strong thematic elements." Production was delayed in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but also because star John Cho suffered an injury on-set, which required him to fly from the show's shooting location in New Zealand to Los Angeles for surgery.

 

Cho plays the live-action series' lead character, Spike Spiegel, and much has been made online of his very impressive hair game for this role. The director of the original anime series, Shinichirō Watanabe, served as a consultant. Per the official premise, "As different as they are deadly, Spike Spiegel (Cho), Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), and Faye Valentine (Daniella Pineda) form a scrappy, snarky crew ready to hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals—for the right price. But they can only kick and quip their way out of so many scuffles before their pasts finally catch up with them."

 

For the Netflix live-action series' opening credits, the streaming platform has opted to pay homage to the original anime opening credits (check out this side-by-side comparison), set to the original theme music ("Tank!"). We even catch a glimpse of Ein, played by an adorable Welsh Corgi named Henry. Cowboy Bebop will premiere on Netflix on Friday, November 19, 2021. Not gonna lie, we're really looking forward to this one. "See you, space cowboy!"

The Witcher S2 trailer

Henry Cavill is back in the title role for the second season of The Witcher.

The Witcher (based on the hugely popular books by Andrzej Sapkowski) was one of the streaming platform's top ten shows of 2019, despite boasting a fairly complicated narrative structure: three separate timelines spanning 100 years. It played a little fast and loose with the source material, but that turned out to work quite well.

 

As Ani Bundel wrote for Ars last year, "Netflix's The Witcher turned out to be a catchy, bingeable series not because of a blind faithfulness to the original work but by showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich disregarding how the original material was structured. By sticking with the spirit of the stories, instead of following them letter-of-the-law style, The Witcher was far more successful than anyone could have imagined."

 

Henry Cavill stars as Geralt of Riva, the titular Witcher, a hunter of monsters with magical powers. His destiny is linked to Crown Princess Ciri (Freya Allan) and complicated by a sorceress, Yennefer of Vengerberg (Ana Cholatra), who is one-quarter elf. The first season drew on two short story collections, The Last Wish and Sword of Destiny, to follow the three main characters at different points in time, ultimately converging in a battle to defend Sodden Hill against Nilfgaardian invaders. In the season finale, Geralt and Ciri finally meet, while Yennefer has mysteriously disappeared after unleashing a stream of fire on the invaders.

 

This new trailer opens with Geralt in action, slaying monsters, while ruminating on the fact that "evil is evil," whether said evil is lesser, greater, or just plain middling. We get glimpses of the Nilfgaardian invaders and of Geralt embracing Ciri, whom he swears to protect. After so many years spent in lonely, monster-slaying isolation, he's asked what changed him. "Yennefer of Vengerberg," he answers. We see Yennefer captured behind enemy lines, being told that the war has just begun. And a major theme for S2 seems to be the monsters that lurk within human beings, perhaps worse than the actual monsters that plague the Continent.

 

In addition to the trailer, Netflix released two brief first look clips from the upcoming season, and the company also announced the series has been renewed for a third season. The Witcher S2 drops on Netflix on December 17, 2021, and then we're getting a lot more Witcher-related content in the future. There are two animated spin-off films in the works, one of which is called The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf, about the origins of Geralt's mentor Vesemir. There will also be a live-action prequel limited series, The Witcher: Blood Origins, starring Sophia Brown and Michelle Yeoh. It's set 1,200 years before Geralt's time, exploring the origin of the Witchers. For more family-oriented viewers, there is even a kids' TV series in the works, too.

Army of Thieves trailer

There's more heist than zombies in new trailer for Army of Thieves.

We loved Zack Snyder's Army of the Dead on Netflix, as much for its winsome characters as for all the zombie-fueled mayhem. So we were delighted to hear that safe-cracker Ludwig Dieter (played by Matthias Schweighöfer) was getting his own standalone spinoff film. As I've written previously, Army of Thieves was already in post-production when Army of the Dead debuted, having wrapped filming in Germany in December.

 

Schweighöfer both stars and directs, and while the film is not a bona fide zombie film, it is set in the early stages of the zombie outbreak that makes up the opening backstory montage of Army of the Dead. Per the official premise, "Small-town bank teller Dieter gets drawn into the adventure of a lifetime when a mysterious woman recruits him to join a crew of Interpol’s most wanted criminals, attempting to heist a sequence of legendary, impossible-to-crack safes across Europe."

 

Co-producer Deborah Snyder has compared Army of Thieves to the "romantic comedy heist," 2003's The Italian Job (itself a remake of the 1969 British film). Those elements are on full display in the new trailer. We see Dieter participating in what seems to be a safecracking competition, which he wins easily. That gets him recruited to a team that pulls off bank heists around the world, and they see the onset of the zombie apocalypse as a welcome distraction, offering them the opportunity of a lifetime. Dieter doesn't consider himself a criminal, but Gwendoline (Nathalie Emmanuel) is a very beautiful woman. Plus, she's offering him "a life less ordinary."

 

The rest of the team includes "master hacker" Korina (Ruby O. Fee), getaway driver Rolph (Guz Khan), and the muscular Brad Cage (Stuart Martin), "our very own live action hero." Dieter sums everything up nicely: "So is it like in a movie film where each one of us has a different skill set and only working together that we can pull off that which needs the pulling off?" There's also an intellectual challenge for him since the heist involves three top-notch safes that will push his skills to the limit. Like its predecessor, this looks like a lot of fun.

 

Army of Thieves is scheduled for release on October 29, 2021. Also in development is an anime-inspired prequel TV series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas

 

 

Occultist tries to imprison Death in first The Sandman teaser