Broadcasted live from São Paulo, Brazil, Netflix Tudum unveiled previews for their shows throughout 2023 and beyond. Teasers range from the live-action One Piece to the announcement of Linda Hamilton joining the cast of Stranger Things' fifth season. We pore through the announcements made and present the ones that matter.
Remember the English live-action remake of Death Note? What about the English live-action remake of Cowboy Bebop? The last two adaptations didn't fair great but this is Netflix, damn it, they will perfect the formulae! And from the teaser above for the best-selling manga, One Piece. It looks to be brimming with... potential? We'll see when the full-length trailer drops next.
Speaking of adaptations...
The problems with the M Night Shyamalan-helmed movie were a-plenty: the whitewashing in its casting; the lacklustre bending; the grimdark tone of the film. Producers of the TV series will adhere more to the cartoon series... except that Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, the co-creators of the original Avatar series left the TV adaptation over creative differences.
The ghost of Battle Royale returns with... a cast announcement. New players join the second season like Kang Ha-neul and Park Sung-hoon, along with last season's cast—Lee Jung-jae (hopefully without the new dye job); Lee Byung-hun; Wi Ha-jun. We did not see Jung HoYeon mentioned in the announcement. We know of her fate in the last series but a viewer could hope that through the magic of disbelief and a narrative loophole, Jung would return.
When the production of a real-life Squid Game was announced, there was a furore about the morality of staging a real-life showcase about capitalism and class systems. We doubt that Netflix's Squid Game The Challenge would kill off the losers (right?) the show came close to doing so. Reports about contestants' "inhumane conditions" came to light with some of them needing medical aid on site.
Still, we reckon there would be eyeballs to the real-life competition. But The Challenge has a steep hill to overcome as YouTube's Mr Beast came out with his Squid Game-inspired challenge a year ago.
Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book was adapted into a limited TV series of the same name. Directed by Shawn Levy (the director of Night of the Museum), we get a first look at the WWII four-parter about a blind French woman, Marie-Laure (played by Aria Mia Loberti) and a German soldier named Werner (Louis Hofmann), whose paths cross in occupied France. The series is expected to be released 2 November 2023.
A Terminator alumnus joins Stranger Things. Linda Hamilton, a badass who rivals the likes of Ellen Ripley, joins the cast for the fifth and final season of the ground-breaking series. No word yet on whom she would play but it should give the show a strong sense of female empowerment when it comes out.
Will this adaptation from Liu Cixin's seminal work redeem David Benioff and DB Weiss? Best remembered for their work behind Game of Thrones and the dead-before-it-was-made TV series, Confederate (an American alternate history where the slaves never got their freedom), Benioff and Weiss will finally make a comeback with this sci-fi series that will stream on Netflix.
