The Nun II

The next addition to The Conjuring Universe is headed to theaters and fans of the horror franchise can’t wait to see what terror the demon Valak has in store for them next. Part of the dark world created by horror hero James Wan, The Nun II has been long awaited, and five years after the release of the first The Nun film, audiences are eager to see what haunt the demon is headed to next. In the first Nun film, audiences followed Sister Irene and Father Burke as they investigated the death of a nun in Saint Cartha’s monastery in Romania. 

Things weren’t what they seemed within the walls of the Abbey, and Sister Irene faced off against the demon who escaped banishment by possessing unsuspecting delivery man Maurice. With the second film picking up four years later, audiences will have to wait and see what horrors the demon will cause while residing in its new vessel.

Warner Bros released the official trailer for The Nun II on July 6, 2023. The trailer will also play before showings of Insidious: The Red Door. The trailer teases that the sequel to the Conjuring spin-off will feature plenty of scares, and will bring a new story to the demonic nun Valak. A teaser trailer was shown exclusively in theaters in early June 2023, in front of select screenings of The Boogeyman. On August 7, we got a new teaser for The Nun II, which you can see below:

One Piece LiveAction Ep 9

Episode 9

Before One Piece was a live-action series on Netflix, it was (and still is) a long-running anime. Before it was an anime, it was (and still is) an even longer-running Manga series. There are always expectations that come paired with adaptations, but pair two sets of expectations, each from groups of fans that could very well have spent 25+ years invested in a story and a set of characters, and the task feels damn near thankless. Fortunately, Netflix's take on Eiichiro Oda's world of adventure and piracy stands tall on its own as the kind of nostalgic, swashbuckling adventure we don't see enough of these days.

Adapting the East Blue Arc of the Manga, One Piece follows Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) a young man who has long dreamed of a life of piracy, who is finally ready to take to the seas and become King of the Pirates by finding the legendary One Piece treasure, hidden somewhere in the Grand Line — the most dangerous stretch of ocean in the world, which has claimed the life of many a pirate. Many are skeptical, trying to dissuade him from his chosen course by pointing out that pirates are usually the bad guys. But Luffy grew up under the mentorship of Captain Shanks (Peter Gadiot) and his crew, who seem to be the only decent pirates on the seas, so his perspective might be a tad off.

The Equalizer 3

The Equalizer 3

The transition from television series to film franchise is one that, on occasion, works perfectly. Throughout the years we have seen several successful TV shows turned into even more successful big-screen behemoths, with the likes of 21 Jump Street and The Simpsons receiving Hollywood adaptations. One such series is the 1980s spy-thriller The Equalizer, originally co-created by Michael Sloan and Richard Lindheim. 

The series was a huge hit in its day but, after ending in August 1989, there were plenty of empty years for fans of the show to yearn for its appearance on their screens once again. Alas, nearly 30 years later, the announcement was made that a Hollywood adaptation was in the works, with the 2014 film of the same name written by Richard Wenk and directed by Antoine Fuqua. The movie starred Denzel Washington (Training Day) in the lead role, with his portrayal of Robert McCall becoming one of his most iconic characters. So, with such a great reaction to the first movie from both lovers of the source material and new fans alike, it was a no-brainer for executives to commission a sequel. With the sequel also managing to capture the attention and love of a plethora of fans, a third installment of the franchise was announced, with that film expected to release later this year. So, with that in mind, here is everything we know about The Equalizer 3 so far.

Ahsoka (Series)

Ahsoka Season1

With a franchise as vast as Star Wars that has a massive catalog of beloved characters, not even the most recognizable ones have a story quite like Ahsoka Tano. It's hard to believe that there was a point in time when fans thought the idea of Anakin Skywalker having a padawan was preposterous since no such thing had ever even been mentioned in the live-action films. 

Yet, slowly but surely, young Ahsoka captured the hearts of the fandom, going from an arrogant learner into a patient Jedi Knight in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. When she left the Jedi Order to have a new life, many assumed that was the end of her journey, and yet she still chose to fight the good fight in Star Wars Rebels, even coming face to face with her former master, now corrupted into the evil Darth Vader. Her duel with Vader also should have been the end of her journey, yet she somehow cheated death and finally made her glorious live-action debut in The Mandalorian, even making a brief appearance in The Book of Boba Fett.

Now that the fan favorite has become a household name, her story is set to continue once again with her very own live-action series. Two and a half years after it was first announced, Ahsoka is almost here, and we finally got some long-awaited details for her first-ever solo series, so here's everything we know so far about Snips's next series adventure.

Blue Beetle 

At first blush, there are few unexpected notes to “Blue Beetle.” When a baddie says, “The love you feel for your family makes you weak,” you know the hero will prove that claim wrong. The villain, Victoria (Susan Sarandon), is hardly configured; it doesn’t take much guessing to know they’re a metaphor for the past and present ills of white-American imperialism. Love will prevail. Self-discovery will happen. And yet, “Blue Beetle” is surprisingly politically spry; the family-bound narrative is shockingly pure; its comedy swerves away from low-hanging memeification. Instead, the film cares more about how these characters mesh.

While the Blue Beetle character dates back to 1939, the updated, culturally specific incarnation of Jaime Reyes didn’t grace DC pages until 2006. Since then, comic book movies have become the center of American pop culture. But those films have only recently attempted to touch every corner of human existence. Marvel Studios has, for instance, the “Black Panther” series and “Eternals,” Sony has the animated “Spider-Man,” while DCU has “Black Adam,” “Aquaman,” “Birds of Prey,” and, to a lesser extent, the “Justice League” film. While diverse, the DCU movies have mostly avoided locking characters into any sort of cultural specificity. “Blue Beetle” marks a sharp break from that unwritten edict. 

ELEMENTAL

At its best, Pixar is unbeatable, making clever, charming, and brightly original films to touch the heart and spark the imagination. And so it’s been dispiriting to see the animation studio behind such emotive triumphs as “Toy Story,” “Ratatouille,” “Up,” and “Inside Out”—among the best films of their respective years, bar none—recently fall short of its past standard of excellence. 

It’s not just that modern-day Pixar has focused on reprising its greatest hits with a parade of sequels (“Toy Story 4,” “Incredibles 2,” “Lightyear”), or that the studio’s slate of recent originals (“Soul,” “Luca,” “Turning Red”) have all, oddly enough, centered on characters transforming into animals (a revealing trope for its prevalence in films about feeling different, whose initially diverse protagonists invariably spend most of the runtime covered in fur or scales). Also absent lately at Pixar, a subsidiary of Disney since 2006, is the mastery of execution that had distinguished the studio, a brilliance for establishing high-concept premises and effortlessly navigating their particulars. 

Haunted Mansion 2023

    Haunted Mansion

Disney’s second crack at adapting its famous Haunted Mansion attraction into a cinematic experience fares much better than its Eddie Murphy-starring predecessor. In the hands of writer Katie Dippold and director Justin Simien, 2023’s Haunted Mansion is a soulful New Orleans ghost story that expertly speaks to younger audiences about death, grief's stranglehold, and the afterlife. Dippold finds a tender beating heart at the core of her screenplay without sacrificing the gateway horror ambitions of this PG-13 spookshow. Haunted Mansion successfully balances emotional sweetness and just-frightening-enough spectral scares with a Disneyfication of genre tropes, becoming a fun-filled scary movie for (almost) the entire family.

An eclectic ensemble – led by LaKeith Stanfield in the role of Louisiana tour guide Ben Matthias – squares off against the 999 spirits inhabiting single mother Gabbie’s (Rosario Dawson) new residence. Gabbie and her social-outcast son Travis (Chase Dillon) try to flee from the estate when they discover its paranormal infestation — they’re no fools. Dippold acknowledges how silly it’d be for a family to cohabitate with unpredictable entities and writes characters who hardly want to become Ghostbusters. Still, they have to because the film’s rules cleverly establish a logical reason that keeps everyone from a full-sprint exit. From Danny DeVito’s oddball college professor Bruce to Owen Wilson’s suspiciously chill Father Kent to Tiffany Haddish’s cost-effective medium Harriet, there’s no glaring weak link. Haunted Mansion is one of those comedies where everyone seemed to enjoy their time on set, which makes for a loosey-goosey cast playing off one another’s reactions to supernatural absurdity with easygoing chemistry.