It’s horribly named, but the Netflix Tudum event gave us plenty of looks at upcoming series, behind-the-scenes footage and tons of TV to really grip our teeth into. To pare it down a little, here’s 7 of the biggest things worth keeping an eye on.
Arcane, the League of Legends animated series, launches November 6.
Arcane‘s been tantalising for years, partially because fans have looked at all of those League videos from Worlds and thought, “Why don’t they just make their own animated series?”
On November 6, we’ll finally see how well at least one of those ideas come together. The series will mostly focus on Piltover and Zaun and the conflict between the two, with Viktor, Caitlyn, Jinx, Vi, Jayce, Mel, Vander and Silco all starring. It’s worth noting the structure too: nine episodes will be released over three weeks in three “acts” a piece.
Charles Dance definitely fits for The Sandman.
I have absolutely no idea whether this will work, but I’m sure as hell keen to see Netflix try. The Sandman is one of Neil Gaiman’s best works, but attempts to bring it to life as a feature film have been fraught for years. A ’90s film got stuck in development hell, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt abandoned another feature film adaptation in 2016 over creative differences with New Line Cinema.
It’s a tough series to stick. Here’s hoping Netflix nails it. So far, Charles Dance is doing pretty well.
Inside Job is an animated series about an office that manages the world’s conspiracy theories.
What’s it like to actually be the deep state, huffing chem trails and herding actual sheeple? That’s Inside Job, a new aniamted series dropping on October 22. It’s set in the fictional office of Cognito Inc, the company responsible for managing the world’s conspiracies.
Both Alex Hirsch and Shion Takeuchi from Gravity Falls are on Inside Job, and the animation shown looks solid. It’ll stream on Netflix globally from October 22.
Drifting Home is a new feature-length film from the makers of A Whisker Away.
Studio Colorido also recently put together one of the episodes for Star Wars: Visions (Tatooine Rhapsody), as well as the animation for Pokemon: Twilight Wings. Drifting Home is more in their traditional wheelhouse though, carrying on from the Close Encounters of the Third Kind meets Ghibli school kids mysteries that the studio has done so well.
Penguin Highway, Studio Colorido’s first film that gained massive critical success, was about a kid trying to uncover the mystery of why small penguins were showing up in a random small-town field. In Drifting Home, there’s a similar real world goes weird vibe: Kosuke and his friends walk into an abandoned apartment building set for demolition, only to be swallowed up and discover the apartment is now floating in the middle of a massive ocean. Can they make it back?
Drifting Home will stream globally on Netflix sometime in 2022.
Super Crooks is an animated adaptation of the Mark Millar classic.
One of the best things from Netflix’s Tudum roster, for my money. It’ll air on Netflix from November 25, with the whole series running across 13 30-minute episodes. The anime is focusing on what seems like Johnny Bolt and his crew running a final heist on the Union of Justice, an aging group of superheroes first featured in Jupiter’s Legacy, another series adapted by Netflix earlier this year.
Jupiter’s Legacy didn’t really take off though, and it seems like Super Crooks, coupled with the animation style, might have a much bigger chance of success. (It’ll also probably be cheaper: Jupiter’s Legacy supposedly cost around $US200 million, and it hasn’t been renewed for a second season.)
More Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer, Vesemir, and plenty more.
Why is Geralt quaffing potions in expectation of a fight? Why is Ciri not joining in? (Or maybe she does.) And what’s Netflix’s take on a bruxa, the vampire-style creature that’s supposedly hiding behind the door?
Those are some of the questions from the first looks Netflix provided into The Witcher Season 2, which launches globally on December 17. We also got a deeper, more traditional series-trailer, which included a look at Kaer Morhen, and some lines of dialogue with Vesemir. There’s also some shots of Yennefer of Vengerberg in combat, too.
That Cowboy Bebop intro.
This doesn’t give us any indication about how the series itself will go, but can we at least appreciate that they didn’t mess with a good thing? And I’m not talking about the song choice, either. There’s a lot about the intro that’s really neat, and there’s always the fallback: if the Netflix attempt doesn’t work, you can always rewatch the original Cowboy Bebop. It never gets old.
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