It was a good week for streaming service announcements, with a smattering of movie and game news thrown in for good measure. Here are our notable reports for the past week.
Streaming television
British actress Hayley Atwell is Lara Croft. Well, vocally anyway. In some spot-on casting, the Agent Carter star will voice the intrepid adventurer in Netflix’s upcoming Tomb Raider anime series, which follows on from the reboot trilogy of games Tomb Raider (2013), Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Castlevania and Blood of Zeus’s Powerhouse Animation is bringing the project to life. No word yet on a release date or episode count. More on Atwell’s casting here.
We also got our first trailer for Disney+ series Hawkeye, the next small screen instalment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In post-blip New York City, former Avenger Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) has a seemingly simple mission: get back to his family for Christmas. Then 22-year-old aspiring superhero Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) crosses his path. Marvel Studios’ Hawkeye starts streaming November 24.
Finally, and surprisingly, a live-action She-Ra adaptation is now in the very early stages of development for Amazon Prime. Learn more.
Film
We now know what Laika’s next project is. The acclaimed stop-motion animation studio behind the likes of Coraline, ParaNorman and Kubo and the Two Strings, is adapting the novel Wildwood, a dark fantasy novel from The Decemberists lead singer and songwriter Colin Meloy, and artist Carson Ellis. Wildwood sees young heroine Prue enter an enchanted forest on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon to save her baby brother who’s been whisked away by crows. More about the project here.
If you want to go in cold, don’t watch this second story-centric trailer for Last Night in Soho, the latest from always-inventive filmmaker Edgar Wright. Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith and Terence Stamp star in this psychological horror tale with time travel overtones. Last Night in Soho releases October 29.
Finally, Vanity Fair has an extensive first look at Guillermo del Toro’s novel adaptation Nightmare Alley. Set for release on December 17, and featuring an all-star cast that includes Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins and Rooney Mara, this crime noir tale rooted in seedy carnival life, clearly has award season ambitions. Read the Vanity Fair article, or this shorter one, for more information on the project, and loads of other images of the cast.
Gaming
Finally, to offset all the darkness in today’s recap, we have a release date and new trailer for Unpacking, a zen puzzle game about taking things out of boxes and learning about people’s lives in the process. You can play Unpacking on Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox from November 2. The game will also be a day one release on Xbox Game Pass.