Neil Gaiman’s excellent book American Gods is headed for TV, with screenwriter Bryan Fuller of Pushing Daisies fame heavily involved. The book won the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Locus Award, and the Nebula Award, which is quite a range of recognition for a single novel; I can’t wait to see what they do with the show. It is scheduled to air on Starz in 2017, and while I haven’t found a trailer yet I did find a rather interesting interview with Bryan about both it and the new Amazing Stories show over at Crave. And word is that Neil Gaiman will write some of the episodes for the new series, which puts me solidly on board with the project.
The only real choice this week is the conclusion to its series: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2. Hopefully this will live up to the story Suzanne Collins created when she wrote the books. Everyone has seen the trailer by now, so instead I am including a wonderful fan tribute parody theme song.
Movies brings us The Man From U.N.C.L.E. for our original release, so if you missed this excellent film in the theaters you now have another shot at it. While there isn’t anything previously unreleased in it, I do have to mention The Collected Works of Hayao Miyazaki brings together everything Disney has distributed by him in a single box set. No TV to speak of this week.
In Anime, Buddy Complex: The Complete Series is a story about time travel, interstellar combat, giant mecha’s, and all the other things that make high school such a learning experience. Tiny though the story arc is for Sword Art Online II: Calibur, it is still world class and well worth watching as the SAO franchise keeps gathering momentum. Finally, Invaders of the Rokujyoma!? brings a collection of characters that include a girl ghost, a Magical Girl, a luscious Subterranean bombshell,
and a fiery space princess!
Yes! Team RWBY is back, with still more combat comedy and adventure as they roll into volume 3. If you are new to the series, start off with the original 16 episodes of RWBY, then go through 12 more for volume 2, before hitting the new series. This show is being created in Poser Pro by the folks at Rooster Teeth, of combat comedy masterpiece Red Vs. Blue fame. I find this story fascinating, and can’t wait to see where they take it from here.
It looks like they have put some effort into Warcraft: The Beginning, which will be hitting theaters on June 16th, 2016. There is nothing to their web site so far, but there is a little bit of info on their facebook page. Personally, the trailer sold me; I will definitely be in the theater for this one.
It starts November 20th, and Jessica Jones on Netflix may be the most extreme Marvel program yet. That makes sense, considering it is limited to a single non-broadcast platform for their first run, allowing them to get as edgy as they want. And when you look at their Comic Book Source Material you begin to realize just how strange and twisted they might end up by the end of the first season. Also worth checking out are the series of IGN interviews that begin to bring the rest of the cast into focus. We only have about another week and a half, I can’t wait to see for myself how they unfold this story.