Fun on a bun! Hulu first announced they were producing new episodes of Futurama in February of last year. The typical incubation period for an animated series is about two years, but we suppose a lot of things were set up already, as we’ve just learned the first ten episodes will premiere in the VERY near World of Tomorrow — July 24. The episodes will be released one at a time on a weekly basis.
American adaptions of Japanese properties tend to not go very well, with one exception. Robert Rodriguez and James Cameron’s Alita: Battle Angel, based on the manga series Battle Angel Alita, is the one such adaption I haven’t heard anyone say anything negative about. In fact, most people love it. The only problem is, the massive following it has today wasn’t there in 2019 when the film came out. Alita only did okay at the box office, and given how expensive it was to make, 20th Century Fox put aside all hopes for a sequel.
Avatar: The Way Of Water is now the third highest-grossing movie of all time. Usually, when movies do THAT much business, they become a hot topic of cultural conversation, but….not this time. Way of Water has kind of just existed in the background, vacuuming up zillions of dollars silently, while clips of Michelle Yeoh kicking people around in Everything Everywhere All At Once blankets entertainment websites. That movie generated about one sixty-third of the profits Way of Water did. It’s a different world.
The third trailer for Avatar 2 was released yesterday, but there’s not that much difference between it and the previous two. There’s swimming, and then there’s more swimming. It is subtitled The Way Of Water, so it’s not like the name is inaccurate, but we feel like it needs a bit more than this to hold our interest.
There are few 2022 movies we’re more hyped up for than Prey, the Predator prequel that takes things back to the past. In the 1987 original, a Native American member of the team suggested that his ancestors had encounters with Predators. Now we’ll find out what that was like.
If I told you Hulu was going to be producing their own sequel to the Predator franchise through 20th Century Studios, your reaction might not be an immediate “I’m there.” But that’s before you know the details. For one thing, it’s called “Prey,” it’s actually a prequel and it’s set 300 years in the past.
For a long time there’s been this crowd waiting with anticipation for one of James Cameron’s big pet projects to bomb. When reports came out of Titanic going way over budget, people thought it’d be that one — nope, biggest hit of 1997. When trailers for Avatar began showing up, and South Park accurately parodied the film before it was released, everyone thought “this is gonna be Cameron’s crash down to Earth,” but — nope, biggest hit of 2009.