Daniel Craig’s Benoit Blanc is back with a new Knives Out murder mystery in Wake Up Dead Man, Brad Pitt’s F1 movie finally races to its streaming debut on AppleTV, and the second season of video game adaptation Fallout leads this week’s streaming releases.

SERIES

Taylor Swift: The End of an Era

12 December 2025 – Disney+

As I would be hard pressed to name even half a dozen of Taylor Swift’s songs, I am most definitely not the target audience for 6-episode docuseries Taylor Swift: The End of an Era. Given the fact that the 14-time Grammy Award-winning pop star is the highest-grossing live music artist, the wealthiest female musician, and one of the best-selling music artists of all time though, I think I am the odd one out here. And when Swift completed her global Eras Tour – spanning five continents over 21 months – it would go down as the highest-grossing tour of all time. Recorded at the final show of the Eras tour in Vancouver, and also featuring other performers, family members, and friends – including Gracie Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, Ed Sheeran, and Florence Welch – The End of an Era offers never-before-seen insight into the tireless preparation and hard work that it took to create this phenomenon. Two episodes will debut each week.

Fallout S2

17 December 2025 – Prime Video

We are thankfully no longer living in the age of terrible video game adaptations as studios realize just how to give fans what they want. That being said, I don’t think many people expected Prime Video’s Fallout series to be as good – and accurate to the source – as it was, until the first season dropped last year and promptly blew us all away. Part of a beloved role-playing game franchise that began life all the way back in 1997, Fallout is set in a post-apocalyptic America, two centuries after the Great War of 2077 saw society collapse in a nuclear holocaust. Some pockets of humanity survived though, both on the unforgiving and harsh surface and in the relatively secure and isolated bunkers. It’s from one of these bunkers that Ella Purnell’s Lucy – a “Vault dweller” – emerged with a mission to look for her kidnapped father which saw her run into all sorts of crazy characters as she had her protected world view shattered by the absurd reality. Picking up in the aftermath of the first season’s explosive finale (which I won’t spoil here in case you plan to catch up), Lucy is embarking on a journey through the wasteland of the Mojave Desert to a certain post-apocalyptic city that fans of the games will be very familiar with: New Vegas.

MOVIES

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

12 December 2025 – Netflix

I have to point out that Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is absolutely horrible title. And that’s about all the bad vibes I’m getting from this highly anticipated third entry in writer/director Rian Johnson’s fantastic murder mystery movie series that follows Daniel Craig’s brilliant (and hilariously accented) private eye Benoit Blanc as he solves seemingly unsolvable cases. After solving the locked room murder of a mystery writer in 2019’s Knives Out and then unpeeling the many layers of a tech billionaire’s private island in 2022’s Glass Onion, Wake Up Dead Man finds the Southern-fried detective being called into unravel “a case beyond belief” when an “impossible” murder takes place around the church in a small New York hamlet. And this one has a personal connection to Blanc! Joining Craig in the absolute stacked cast is Josh O’Connor, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Thomas Haden Church, and Daryl McCormack. Damn, that’s a lot of talent!

F1: The Movie

12 December 2025 – AppleTV+

It’s been just shy of 6 months since the AppleTV produced F1: The Movie raced into cinemas and became the highest grossing film of the Brad Pitts entire career and it’s finally debuting on the streamer! Directed by Top Maverick’s Joseph Kosinski and co-produced by none other than 8-time Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton, F1 is unlike any racing movie ever put on screen. Filmed with an unprecedented collaboration with motorsports’ biggest entity, Pitt and co all filmed in real racecars (modified to accommodate cameras and backup drivers) against real racers, with a lot of the footage being captured on the actual race day at live events. And with it all shot for IMAX it made for one hell of a thrilling time. As long as you can suspend your disbelief a bit. F1 fans (and I include myself in this number) need to not go into this expecting a racing simulator. This is still Hollywood, after all. And this leeway begins with the actual premise as the 61-year-old Pitt plays washed-up ex F1 racer Sonny Hayes who gets given a second chance at the sport (despite being a few decades older than the oldest driver to ever compete) when an old friend-turned-owner of a struggling F1 team offers him a seat, in the hopes that he can help turn their hotshot rookie prospect (Damson Idris) into a champion against impossible odds.

The Night Before Christmas in Wonderland

14 December 2025 – Showmax

It’s not all murder mysteries and blockbuster racing this week, as we can’t forget about entertaining the young ones during the festive season either. And Showmax has your back with The Before Christmas in Wonderland, a new musical animated feature film featuring the voice talents of Gerard Butler and Emilia Clarke. In this Sky Cinema production, which mashes together Yuletide cheer with Lewis Carrol’s beloved Alice in Wonderland, The Queen of Hearts (Clark) has outlawed Christmas because she didn’t receive the gift she asked for as a child. Years later, Father Christmas (Butler) finally unearths her lost letter and travels to the whimsical world of Wonderland. With the help of curious young Alice (Simone Ashley), can Christmas be saved?

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

17 December 2025 – Showmax

Tom Cruise’s superspy Ethan Hunt has finally run his last mission (maybe). Following on directly from the events in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning sees Hunt and his team on a desperate race around the globe to prevent the Entity, a nigh-omnipotent rogue AI, and its henchmen led by the villainous Gabriel from destroying humanity. Unfortunately, for Cruise and co, this is definitely not the resounding high note he would have liked to end it on. As I explained in my 7/10 review, “While some of its impenetrable and bloated plotting, combined with a disappointing villain, stop it from reaching previous franchise heights, The Final Reckoning boasts enough fun character beats and a few all-time great action spectacles to make for a thrilling if uneven series finale.”

RENTALS/PURCHASES

The following movies have recently become available for digital purchase/rental:

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Purchase: Apple TV – R170

Rental: Apple TV – R45

Usually when a new movie that I’ve never really heard of suddenly pops up on my radar, I have to check out the official blurb to get an idea of what it’s about and what type of movie it is. For new drama A Big Bold Beautiful Journey though, I feel like this is not telling me much at all: “Two strangers who meet at a mutual friend’s wedding have the chance to relive important moments from their pasts, illuminating the path that led them to the present and gaining the opportunity to change their futures.” Well, at least I know it stars the incredibly potent pairing of Colin Farrell and Margot Robbie and seems to be… *checks notes*… a romantic drama fantasy science-fiction story?! Well, okay then.