TV
The Last of Us Review: HBO’s Video Game Adaptation Is Too Loyal to Its Source Material
The Pitch: The video game adaptation remains an albatross around the neck of many a film and TV producer. For every Silent Hill, there’s a dozen or so Wing Commanders; TV’s no different, even as recently as last year’s weaksauce Halo series for Paramount+. But HBO hopes to break the mold with The Last of Us, their prestige-drama take on the acclaimed Naughty Dog game of the same name. If you’ve played that game, or its divisive sequel (or watched The Walking Dead or any other zombie media over the past few decades), the premise is pretty familiar: The world has been ravaged by a deadly plague that kills millions and turns them into flesh-eating monsters (covered in mutated Cordyceps fungus), and the desperate survivors scramble to stay alive and maintain their huma...
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies Trailer Returns to Rydell High: Watch
“Sometimes you gotta be bad to do good,” says Marisa Davila’s Jane in the new teaser trailer for Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies. With those words, the stage is set for the prequel series, which premieres on Paramount+ on April 6th. Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies is set in 1954 — four years before the events of Grease. In the series, Jane teams with Nancy (played by Tricia Fukuhara), Olivia (Cheyenne Wells), and Cynthia (Ari Notartomaso) at Rydell High to form the titular Pink Ladies girl gang, and sets off a moral panic in the process. Their efforts are met with resistance by Jackie Hoffman’s Assistant Principal McGee, who issues the following warning: “Ladies, you must be careful with whom you associate. A girl’s reputation is all that she has.” Thankfully, the quartet doesn’t heed her ...
Netflix Renews Wednesday for Season 2
Wednesday Addams doesn’t bury hatchets, she sharpens them, and she’ll be back sharper than ever now that Netflix has officially renewed Wednesday for Season 2. The news is hardly a surprise; Wednesday is one of Netflix’s biggest hits ever, even breaking some viewership records set by Stranger Things. Season 1 of the Tim Burton-produced, Jenna Ortega-starring series inspired viral dances and unblinking stares, and according to co-showrunners Miles Millar and Alfred Gough, they’re just getting started. “It’s been incredible to create a show that has connected with people across the world,” they told Tudum. “Thrilled to continue Wednesday’s tortuous journey into Season 2. We can’t wait to dive head first into another season and explore the kooky spooky world of N...
50 Cent Announces 8 Mile Television Series, Eminem Involved
50 Cent has announced that his next project will involve one of his oldest collaborators, saying on the January 6th episode of Big Boy TV that he’s adapting Eminem’s 2002 film 8 Mile into a television series. “I’m gonna bring his 8 Mile to television,” 50 Cent said, adding that Eminem is involved and the project is underway: “We’re in motion.” He also boasted that the show is “gonna be big. I ain’t got no duds.” Then, proving once again that he is not a baseball fan, he said he was “batting a hundred.” Advertisement Related Video The artist born Curtis Jackson explained that the show “should be there for his legacy,” and compared his goals to the recent reboot of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. “I’ma do Snoop’s story too,” he continued. “We paused on it beca...
Stranger Things Cast Gets Huge Pay Bump Ahead of Final Season
The cast of Stranger Things has received a huge pay bump ahead of the show’s fifth and final season. According to Matthew Belloni of Puck News, as Stranger Things features 20 series regulars, Netflix created four separate tiers with which to negotiate. The first tier, comprised of adult actors Winona Ryder and David Harbour, will receive $9.5 million. The second tier, consisting of original kid actors Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, and Finn Wolfhard, as well as Sadie Sink, will earn just over $7 million. (For comparison, the kids made $25,000 per episode in season one.) Advertisement Related Video The third tier is made up of the older teen actors, such as Natalia Dyer, Maya Hawke, Charlie Heaton, and Joe Keery. They’ll each receive over $6 million for this upcoming seaso...
How Will HBO’s The Last of Us Be Different From the Game? And Other Questions Answered
One of 2023’s first big premieres draws viewers into a dark alternate timeline of societal collapse and mold-infested zombies — a world that’s already quite familiar to video game enthusiasts, because they’ve played it. This is why The Last of Us executive producer Craig Mazin says that in adapting the award-winning video games for HBO, he and executive producer Neil Druckmann made sure that any changes they made during the adaptation process were “always purposeful.” “A lot of people, they go, ‘I want to adapt a thing.’ And someone says, ‘Great, you can.’ And then they’re like, ‘I’m changing all of it.’ And I’m like, ‘Well then why did you want to adapt it?’” Mazin tells Consequence during a roundtable interview. “Sometimes counterintuitively, I’m the one that’s saying, ‘You know wh...
10 Bluey Episodes That Explain Why I’d Die for Those Dogs
Children, while cute, have questionable taste in television. And although first-time parents might be willing to put up with anything for a few minutes of precious silence, by the time of your thousandth re-watch you might find yourself flipping off Blippi or going loco at Cocomelon. When that happens, we inevitably cast about for kids’ programming fit for an adult intelligence. Thankfully, in our time of need, there’s Bluey. Created and written by Joe Brumm, this Australian series is centered not just on young sisters Bluey and Bingo, but also on their hilarious parents, Bandit and Chilli. Despite being full of magic and mystery, it’s more realistic than your usual pre-school entertainment: The kids’ toys are rarely picked up, the back seat of their car makes me feel a lot ...
Blimey! Hulu Unveils Trailer for New Crime-Fighting Cartoon Koala Man: Watch
Things get weird down under. For proof, look no further than Hulu’s latest animated series Koala Man, which gets its official trailer today. Koala Man was created by Aussie director Michael Cusack, who also stars as Kevin, the titular hero. Kevin’s a regular old bloke who tries juggling his family with his burning desire to solve petty crime. Results are mixed. Armed with a marsupial mask, Koala Man traverses the city to rectify potentially catastrophic mishaps like a cat stuck in a tree, a messy lawn mowing job, and janky office Wi-Fi. He’s clearly still getting the hang of things, and his various anthropomorphic animal enemies aren’t making things any easier. Advertisement Related Video Along with Cusack, Koala Man features the voices of Hugh Jackman, Demi Lardner, Jermaine Clement, and ...
Christoph Waltz Menaces Employees in Trailer for The Consultant: Watch
Thanks to his dry delivery, Christoph Waltz has a knack for portraying characters with evil undertones. In the new teaser trailer for the upcoming Prime Video thriller series The Consultant, he puts that talent to good use by menacing employees at the gaming company he’s hired to improve. “My purpose is to improve the business,” Waltz’s Regus Patoff says in the clip. “If it helps you to see me as a monster, so be it.” Sure enough, his methods lead CompWare employees to describe him as a “sociopath.” Watch the full teaser trailer below. Based on Bentley Little’s 2015 novel of the same name, the logline for The Consultant reads as follows: “When a new consultant, Regus Patoff (Christoph Waltz), is hired to improve the business at the App-based gaming company CompWare, employees experience ne...
Hunters Try to “Bring Hitler to Justice” in Trailer for Final Season: Watch
You might think Hitler is dead, but the Hunters think differently in the new trailer for Prime Video’s alternate history revenge thriller. The second and final season comes debuts on January 13th. “You bring Hitler to justice and it’s done, Jon,” Meyers Offerman (Al Pacino) tells Jonah Heidelbaum (Logan Lerman) to kick off the trailer. “You can finally be free.” His presence might be somewhat unexpected given the events of Season 1, which he hints at by saying, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” These flashbacks give way to Heidelbaum putting together a team of old friends and new faces and heading off to South America. Guns and explosives are definitely involved, and there might even be a “skull up the ass,” as a cover of Kelis’ “Milkshake” bops in the background. Advert...
Chris Ledesma, The Simpsons’ Longtime Music Editor, Dead at 64
Chris Ledesma, who served as music editor on The Simpsons for 33 seasons, has died at the age of 64. Ledesma had worked on the animated sitcom since its series premiere in 1989 up until his departure in 2022 due to health issues. All told, Ledesma contributed to 735 episodes of The Simpsons as well as to multiple shorts and other specials. He documented much of his work on a blog called Simpsons Music 500. In a 2013 video profile from SAE Institute USA, Ledesma explained his role on The Simpsons. Primary working in conjunction with longtime composer Alf Clausen, Ledesma said, “We sit down and plot out where all the music is going to go in every scene, and what the music’s motivation is. The composer dreams up the music, and I’m the technical guy who makes sure it fits in the picture ...
What Is Kaleidoscope? Creator Eric Garcia Explains Netflix’s New Heist Series With a Twist
Netflix’s newest heist drama has a fun, technologically-assisted twist to it — one that leads to over 5,000 different possible experiences for the viewer watching. Kaleidoscope, starring Giancarlo Esposito, Rufus Sewell, Jai Courtney, Paz Vega, Tati Gabrielle, and more, tells the story of daring thieves attempting to steal billions from one of the world’s most advanced safes. But the story is not told chronologically — instead, the show’s eight episodes are designed to be watched in any order, capturing specific time periods in relation to the heist, from 24 years beforehand to six months afterward. It’s a complicated concept, but creator Eric Garcia tells Consequence that “I think there’s a lot of fun in mixing it up,” especially when married to a well-loved genre. “People love heist stuf...
