Occasionally, there are multiple news items that come up around the same time and I have to make a choice on what I want to cover. Timeliness is important in this business, so to get all these topics covered, I’m doing a grab bag special of all the various things in my wheelhouse to come out.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Now this is one that I’m really excited for. Doctor Strange was always one of my favorite Marvel heroes and I’ve really enjoyed his MCU appearances so far. So to have a new movie with Sam Raimi of all people as director, has me extremely excited.

It seems we’re still exploring the multiverse here and the fallout of Strange’s actions during the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home. So we should expect to see quite a few variants of famous characters we know and possibly some surprise appearances.

Obviously, the big one is the mysterious figure talking to Strange midway through the trailer, a figure believed to be Patrick Stewart’s Professor Charles Xavier from the Fox X-Men films. Nothing has been confirmed either way of course, but the voice definitely sounds like Patrick Stewart.

Besides the obvious notion of making every bit of live action stuff canon in the multiverse, I think this is setting up a version of the comic book team called the Illuminati.

I’m not alone in this theory as many others have stated the same. For the uninitiated, the Illuminati were a team of superheroes that were experts in their field and would meet up to discuss how to handle various crises. Their numbers included Professor X representing mutants; Mr. Fantastic representing science; Doctor Strange representing magic; Iron Man representing technology; Black Bolt representing the Inhumans; and Namor representing Atlantis.

From the trailer, it seems we can expect multiple antagonistic forces including Mordo, the Doctor Strange Supreme character from What If…?, and a new version of Shuma-Gorath with the name Gargantos due to rights for the “Shuma-Gorath” name being coined by Conan the Barbarian author Robert E. Howard.

This one has the potential to open up all sorts of bizarre multiversal shenanigans, but I do hope that after this one the MCU gives the multiverse a bit of a break. Otherwise, I fear it might become a crutch for easy nostalgia baiting.

Now the big looming question is figuring out who Bruce Campbell is going to play...

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness debuts on May 6, 2022.

Nope

Ok so this one is a little more difficult to talk about. Nope is the newest movie from Jordan Peele, who directed the excellent movie Get Out. In traditional Peele fashion, the trailer is extremely vague about what exactly is going on in the plot.

Apparently, some bizarre….thing happens to a small town. And that is really all we get. People looking up into the sky at something either really big or floating in the air.

We can’t be sure till we see the movie. Honestly, I kind of like that. It is rare that a trailer actually tries to hook you with a mystery nowadays instead of showing you the entire plot and making you wonder why you’d then go pay to see it.

All I can say, is the trailer has me intrigued, and I’m looking forward to watching this one.

Nope comes out on July 22, 2022.

Jurassic World Dominion

The trailer for this movie released a while ago, but it is still worth talking about.

Billed as the last movie in the series, Jurassic World Dominion is reuniting the original cast with the Jurassic World cast to deal with various dinosaurs out in the world following the end of the previous film, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Plot details aren’t too well known at the moment (admittedly I want to go in blind), but the film is to feature the return of Lewis Dodgson. Dodgson, you may remember from the original Jurassic Park, was the one that paid Dennis Nedry to steal the dinosaur embryos. An act that ultimately caused the dinosaurs to get out.

Dodgson had a more active role in the novels by Michael Crichton, particularly in The Lost World novel.

The trailer also featured some new dinosaurs that hadn’t been featured in these movies before, including Therizinasaur, Atrociraptor, Moros intrepidus, Pyroraptor and Giganotosaurus, along with some non-dinosaur prehistoric reptiles including Quetzalcoatlus and Lystrosaurus.

The dinosaur nut in me is excited for several dinosaurs that are accurate to paleontology including the feathers on the Pyrorator.

Jurassic World Dominion comes out June 10, 2022.

Futurama Revival

Futurama is one of my favorite TV shows of all time. There is not a moment that I can’t find a reason to apply a concept, quote or trope from this show that I can apply to anything.

When Hulu announced a revival, I was skeptical, since I feel that the series had a good ending and it didn’t need to have any further episodes. And I remain skeptical as, while most of the original cast are returning, John DiMaggio isn’t.

DiMaggio plays foul-mouthed, alcoholic robot Bender, an incredibly popular character in the series. One of the best of the show in fact.

And I honestly can’t see this revival working at all without DiMaggio. Honestly, if they couldn’t get everyone back, then there is no need to revive it (well outside of the money angle).

It sounds as though they plan to recast the role (big mistake if they do), so I honestly can’t say I’m excited for this. I might tune in to see how things play out, or what the trailer reveals, but I just don’t feel any enthusiasm for this.

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

The trailer for Amazon’s Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series dropped and it looks…fine. I mean obviously for legal reasons it can’t look 100% like the movies, and likewise it is set during the Second Age, several thousand years before The Hobbit.

Of course the trailer doesn’t reveal too much, but from the title we can tell the forging of the Rings of Power, Sauron’s rise to power and the alliance of Men and Elves against him.

I loved the books, I really enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies, I didn’t like The Hobbit movies. So we’ll see how this series turns out.

The first episode debuts on Prime Video on September 2, 2022.

Obi-Wan Kenobi

And lastly, something Star Wars related. There had been talk of an Obi-Wan Kenobi series for a while now and it appears that is will soon be a reality.

Not much is known at the time. We know Ewan McGregor is back as Kenobi, Hayden Christiansen will be playing Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, Joel Edgerton and Bonnie Piesse will be playing Owen and Beru Lars respectively, and we might potentially have Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa return as well.

It was recently announced (literally while writing this) that John Williams will return to score the series.

The series is also expected to be six episodes in length.

This should be an interesting period to explore, but given the lore in question, most of the action is likely to take place on Tatooine for the most part.

Obi-Wan Kenobi debuts on May 25, 2022.