The Friday the 13th prequel series, Crystal Lake, is still set to scare its way onto Peacock even though Bryan Fuller will no longer be showrunning the project.
We first found out about the project back in late 2022, with Fuller steadfastly attached. Fuller, however, went to Twitter X yesterday and shared: “For reasons beyond our control, A24 has elected to go a different way with the material. We hope the final product will be something Friday the 13th fans all over the world will enjoy.”
“Adapting classic horror is something I have some experience with,” Fuller wrote in an earlier threaded tweet. “These shows require a vision that elevates and transforms, as well as delivers what audiences have come to expect, which is an ambitious and risky endeavor. It requires people to take the leap with me.”
It’s clear that Fuller is implying that A24 and Peacock weren’t willing to take a similar leap with Crystal Lake, a recurrent theme, it seems, for Fuller, who left Star Trek: Discovery soon after co-creating it as well as the show American Gods after the first season.
One of his shows that definitely took a leap and was rewarded for it was Hannibal, which Fuller was clear to point out on X as well. “When it works, as with HANNIBAL, the results can be powerful for the storytellers and the audience,” he wrote. “I couldn’t be more proud of the work my co-showrunner Jim Danger Gray and I were able to accomplish with our brilliant writing staff despite the challenges we faced.”
Despite Fuller exiting Crystal Lake, the series, per Entertainment Weekly, is still moving ahead, although a new showrunner has yet to be announced. The show is able to leverage events from the first Friday the 13th film, although not its sequels, which means that the hockey-wearing Jason Voorhees is off-limits (although the young, sweet boy named Jason who dies in the lake remains in play).
What this means for the actual story of the upcoming show remains to be seen, especially given the creative turnover. Time will tell where the horror series ends up, though it will still likely end up streaming on Peacock in the next few years. [ed note: As for Fuller, he's still at work on hisfeature film debut, Dust Bunny, which is set to star Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian, and Mads Mikkelsen—so we know Hideo Kojima will be seated.] [end-mark]
Did you see Pam & Tommy and enjoy the acting going on between actors Sebastian Stan and Lily James? If so, you’re in luck—the MCU’s Winter Soldier (pictured above) and the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Cinderellastar are teaming up once again.
The movie in question is titled Let the Evil Go West, which The Hollywood Reporter describes as a psychological thriller.
Here’s the synopsis, per THR:
Let the Evil Go West centers on a railroad worker who discovers a fortune under deeply disturbing circumstances. As horrifying visions and manifestations drive him toward madness, his wife becomes convinced that an evil presence has attached itself to their family.
We don’t have much more news about the film yet, other than it will be directed by Christian Tafdrup, whose previous credits include the 2022 Dutch film, Speak No Evil, which is getting an English-language adaptation starring James McAvoy. The script comes from someone named Xc Vs, and is produced by Tim and Trevor White at Star Thrower Entertainment, Mark Fasano and Nathan Klingher at Gramercy Park Media, and Allan Mandelbaum.
Time will tell who or what “evil presence” has attached itself to Stan’s character. Time will also tell whether this film is set in the past or contemporary times, as the brief description could go either way.
Whatever the case, it will be good to see Stan and James in another film together. [end-mark]
There’s a new animated series centered on the Caped Crusader coming our way. Today, Prime Video shared some first look images and announced the premiere date for Batman: Caped Crusader, which is being billed as a reimagining of the Batman mythology.
The series has some big names behind it, including J.J. Abrams, The Batman’sMatt Reeves, and Bruce Timm.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Welcome to Gotham City, where the corrupt outnumber the good, criminals run rampant and law-abiding citizens live in a constant state of fear. Forged in the fire of tragedy, wealthy socialite Bruce Wayne becomes something both more and less than human—the BATMAN. His one-man crusade for justice attracts unexpected allies within the GCPD and City Hall, but his heroic actions spawn deadly, unforeseen ramifications.
Catwoman. Credit: Prime Video
We also got details on the characters in the show, replete with descriptions, which you can read below:
BATMAN - A cold, remorseless avenger of evil, seemingly more machine than man. Forged in the fire of tragedy, every fiber of his being is dedicated to the eradication of crime.
BRUCE WAYNE - To the public at large, Bruce Wayne is a shallow dilettante, apparently wasting his parents’ vast fortune on frivolous pursuits and hedonistic pleasures. In fact, he’s an elaborate facade, carefully constructed to divert attention from his activities as Batman.
SELINA KYLE / “CATWOMAN” - Selena Kyle is a blithe and pampered heiress whose family lost their fortune after her father was imprisoned for embezzlement. Despite having the silver spoon yanked from her mouth, Selina refuses to quit living in the lap of luxury and becomes Catwoman as a “fun” way to maintain her lavish lifestyle.
DR. HARLEEN QUINZEL / “HARLEY QUINN” - Despite a personable and bubbly demeanor, Dr. Harleen Quinzel is a brilliant psychiatrist who treats some of Gotham’s elite. However, as Harley Quinn, she is a different person, entirely. A creepy, quiet, calculating menace who secretly dispenses her twisted justice to the truly despicable among her elite clientele.
Clayface. Credit: Prime Video
COMMISSIONER JIM GORDON - Former beat cop close to retirement, Gordon was hired to play along with the corrupt system and run out the clock till he can draw a pension. But they’ve sorely underestimated Jim Gordon. His unassailable character brings him into conflict with dirty cops and crooked politicians, alike. Not to mention, he has to reckon with a deranged vigilante beating up Gotham’s criminals.
CLAYFACE - Thanks to his “unique” facial features, screen actor Basil Karlo has been forever typecast as a B-movie heavy. Frustrated by the limitations his appearance put on both his career and personal life (he fell hopelessly in love with his co-star), Karlo turned to an experimental serum that promised to change his face. However, not only does this serum ultimately disfigure his face, but it ruptures the last of his sanity -- creating the tragic, vengeance seeking villain, Clayface.
These character descriptions sound... familiar. I'll be curious to see how reimagined they are when all ten episodes of Batman: Caped Crusader will premiere on Prime Video on August 1, 2024.
Check out some more first look images below. [end-mark]
Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne. Credit: Prime VideoDr. Harleen Quinzel. Credit: Prime VideoHarley Quinn. Credit: Prime VideoCommissioner Jim Gordon. Credit: Prime Video
Paramount Pictures wants you to experience the day the world went quiet, whether you were seeking that entertainment experience or not. That’s the premise ofA Quiet Place: Day One, the prequel to the two Quiet Place movies that came out in 2018 and 2021 respectively.
For those of you who are blessed with ignorance about this franchise, the premise is that Earth is attacked by aliens who attack anything (or just humans in particular, maybe, the logic doesn’t quite work) who makes a sound. The first two films take place several months after the initial invasion, but Day One starts out the day they first invade. In it, we follow Lupita Nyong’o’s character, Samira, as she and her cat try to survive the attack. We see in the trailer that she eventually teams up with a guy named Eric (Stranger Things’ Eric Quinn) as they try to stay alive and leave Manhattan.
The trailer also gives us a lot of visuals of the aliens in question, who look like a cross between a giant spider and the creatures from Stranger Things. We also see the characters whispering a lot, which we know isn’t quite quiet enough for these extraterrestrials, but I digress.
Michael Sarnoski (Pig) directed the film and wrote the screenplay for Day One. The story comes from him and John Krasinski, who starred in and directed the first two films. Michael Bay, Andrew Form, Brad Fuller, and Krasinski serve as producers. In addition to Nyong’o and Quinn, Day One stars Alex Wolff and Djimon Hounsou.
A Quiet Place: Day One premieres in theaters on June 28, 2024.
Where’s Gollum? Has anyone seen Gollum? Warner Bros. Discovery was certainly looking for him (or, more precisely, a way to cash in on their The Lord of the Rings' intellectual property rights).
Today, during the corporation’s first-quarter earnings conference call (via The Hollywood Reporter), CEO David Zaslav announced that New Line and Warner Bros. Pictures are in the “early stages of script development” for a LOTR movie tentatively titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum and is eying the film to come out sometime in 2026.
There are, of course, six existing features set in the fantastical world that J.R.R. Tolkien created—the three Lord of the Rings films and the three Hobbit films, all of which were spearheaded by Peter Jackson. For those having feelings about a LOTR film without Jackson being involved, I’ve got news for you: According to Zaslav, Jackson and his writing partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens “will be involved every step of the way” in the upcoming film, with Boyens and Walsh penning the script.
For those wondering if this Gollum movie will be a one-and-done endeavor, I have more news for you: Jackson et al signed a two-film deal with Warner Bros., so the odds are very good that this is only the first of many additional LOTR movies coming our way.
“It is an honor and a privilege to travel back to Middle-earth with our good friend and collaborator, Andy Serkis, who has unfinished business with that stinker—Gollum!,” Jackson, Boyens and Walsh said in a statement. “As life long fans of Professor Tolkien’s vast mythology, we are proud to be working with [Warner Bros. Discovery film execs] Mike De Luca, Pam Abdy and the entire team at Warner Bros. on another epic adventure!”
Serkis, who of course played Gollum in the previous films, also expressed his excitement about the project in the same statement: “Yesssss, Precious. The time has come once more to venture into the unknown with my dear friends, the extraordinary and incomparable guardians of Middle-earth Peter, Fran and Philippa. With Mike and Pam, and the Warner Bros. team on the quest as well, alongside WETA and our film making family in New Zealand, it’s just all too delicious… .”
[ed. note: if it's not too forward of us, we have a suggestion for Mr. Serkis that can be best communicated via a reference to The Simpsons:]
Image: 20th Century Fox
The movies, of course, are completely separate from the Prime Video series that Amazon has developed, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. We’ve also seen Gollum recently in a much-maligned video game, but here’s to opening this upcoming film will be more entertaining to experience. [end-mark]
First mentioned as a throwaway “other nasty empire” in a few TNG episodes here and there, we finally saw one in DS9’s “Indiscretion,” where they were pretty much just generic bad guys who looked like Leia’s disguise in Return of the Jedi. Later, DS9 had the Breen enter the Dominion War on the side of the Dominion, but even there, they were just a plot device—something to make it clear that the Cardassians were just one of many species subsumed to the Dominion and that the Gamma Quadrant empire would do whatever was necessary to win and expand.
But we’ve never once gotten any sense of what the Breen are, or who they are. Supposedly, that was the point, that they were mysterious, wearing their encounter suits all the time and such. To me, though, it just felt like they were a plot device—and a cheap one, at that, because the fact that they don’t have comprehensible dialogue means you can just hire extras to play them and not pay them as much. (Given that pretty much every episode of the last two years of DS9 had guest-star lists longer than one’s proverbial arm, you can see why they wanted to cut corners, but still.)
Both “Mirrors” two weeks ago and “Erigah” this week make an attempt to finally change that, to give us some genuine insight into the Breen.
And, well, they’re still not interesting.
Credit: CBS / Paramount+
Folks in the comments of “Mirrors” pointed out that having the Breen be just another set of Forehead Aliens is disappointing, having expressed hope that they might be more complicated than that. As an example, author David Mack—who, full disclosure, is a close friend of your humble reviewer—established in the Typhon Pact novel Zero Sum Game that there are multiple species in the Breen Confederacy, and that “Breen” is a culture, not a species. Dave did this by way of explaining the contradictory facts that had been established about the Breen. (Indeed, Dave’s notion is still compatible with what’s been revealed on Discovery so far, since L’ak and L’ak’s uncle remain the only Breen we’ve seen without the encounter suit.)
But the Breen culture we get is one of factions all vying for power, and didn’t we already do this with the Klingons in season one? And L’ak is important because he’s a scion of the royal family, so we get yet another alien species that has futuristic technology alongside medieval notions like primogeniture and the political importance of genetics and bloodlines over more relevant criteria, and bleah. It’s been done before and nothing interesting is done with it here.
On top of that, we get some other tired clichés here, including one of my least favorite: Incompetent Starfleet Security. Moll moves to escape sickbay after L’ak distracts everyone by overdosing on tricordrazine. (How the super-duper 32nd-century technology can allow a patient to possibly overdose themselves is left as an exercise for the viewer. Especialy since it winds up killing him.) The two nameless security guards are taken out in nothing flat, and then Culber tries to stop her and he actually does better than the trained security personnel, mostly because he's an opening-credits regular and therefore a bigger badass than the trained security personnel. Sigh.
I do like that Moll isn’t really able to get anywhere on the ship because even she’s not that good. And it’s good to see Rachael Ancheril back as Nhan in charge of the security detail holding Moll and L’ak.
Credit: CBS / Paramount+
Okay, I’ve spent almost 600 words dissing the Breen and this episode, so I should probably at this point mention that I generally actually liked this one. In particular, I enjoyed the negotiating done by T’Rina, aided by Vance, Burnham, and Rayner. T’Rina is the one doing it because Rillak is elsewhere and so she delegates it to Ni’Var’s president. By the way, this makes absolutely no sense. It was established back in “The Galactic Barrier” that Rillak has a vice president who would be in charge in her absence. But I’m willing to accept it because Tara Rosling just kills it in this episode, and her steel and her logic and her resolve are all magnificent.
Anyhow, we get some more background on Rayner, as we find out that one of the Breen factions subjugated the Kellerun people a while back, and Rayner was under their power. But it also means he knows a lot about how that faction works, and they’re able to use his knowledge to convince the Breen standing in front of them that they’ve negotiated with another faction to turn L’ak over.
In the end, Moll convinces the Breen that she’s L’ak’s wife—and they have the tattoos to prove it!—and is therefore part of the royal family now, plus she has information about the Progenitor technology. The Federation agrees to let the Breen have Moll in exchange for the Breen’s incredibly big ship not opening fire. (Burnham and Rayner saw a possible future with Federation HQ destroyed by the Breen in “Face the Strange,” and so everyone’s priority is, understandably, to avoid letting the shooting start.)
Now it’s a race. Moll doesn’t have any of the physical evidence or clues, but she has knowledge, and now a big-ass Breen ship. Starfleet has the Romulan notebook, most of the puzzle pieces, and a ship with a spore drive.
The B-plot is more of what Discovery does best, which is figure shit out. Tilly and Adira discover that the piece of metal that they found last week is, basically, a library call slip. Back in the 23rd century, Reno was part of a gaggle of rare-book enthusiasts who kept things in a traveling library. It’s still around nine centuries later, and Reno doesn’t know anyone connected to it now, obviously, but it’s enough to get them moving in the right direction.
Credit: CBS / Paramount+
Something Discovery has continued to excel at is intense discussions, negotiations, debates, whether it’s Osyraa and Vance in “There is a Tide…” or the grand debate about how to approach Species 10C in “…But to Connect” or the T’Kal-in-ket in “Unification III.” T’Rina’s negotiations with the Breen live up to that standard, and it’s beautifully done, making the climax of the episode far more intense than a shooting war would be. (And if you desperately need action, there’s Moll’s escape.)
Next week, it looks like we’re back to the chase for the Progenitors’ tech. Cha cha cha.[end-mark]
There is no lack of zombie movie fare in the world, but if the trailer for the Norwegian film Handling the Undead is any indication, the movie brings an arthouse feel to the genre and has a strong possibility of quietly wrecking you as you watch.
The film is based on an eponymous novel by Swedish author John Ajvide Lindqvist, who also penned the script in collaboration with director Thea Hvistendahl. The trailer introduces three people who have inexplicably come back from the dead in the capital of Norway, and the ramifications that has for those who love and grieve them.
Here’s the more detailed, official synopsis for Handling the Undead:
On a hot summer day in Oslo, the dead mysteriously awaken, and three families are thrown into chaos when their deceased loved ones come back to them. Who are they, and what do they want? A family is faced with the mother’s reawakening before they have even mourned her death after a car accident; an elderly woman gets the love of her life back the same day she has buried her; a grandfather rescues his grandchild from the gravesite in a desperate attempt to get his daughter out of her depression. Handling the Undead is a drama with elements of horror about three families, a story about grief and loss, but also about hope and understanding of what we can’t comprehend or control.
Handling the Undead stars Renate Reinsve, Anders Danielsen Lie, Bjørn Sundquis, Bente Børsum, Bahar Pars, and Inesa Dauksta. It premiered at the Sundance Festival this January, after which Neon picked up the U.S. distribution rights. It will premiere here at the IFC Center in New York City on May 31, 2024 and at select theaters after that on June 7, 2024.
Once upon a time, in the 1990s, there was a movie called Twister that was patently absurd, but also weirdly charming. Now, nearing 30 years later, there is a movie called Twisters that is not a sequel, nor a remake, but just another movie about people who really like to chase tornadoes. The film's tagline seems to be, "You don't face your fears. You ride 'em." This tagline makes me tired.
We now have our second trailer for Twisters, which is much like the first one, except with more buildup to the tornado that traumatizes Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and more chaotic tornado drama as the trailer (and presumably the film) progresses. Now there's a fire tornado! I would like to be into this, but every time a character opens their mouth, the film gets less appealing. She's a smarty-pants city girl! He (Glen Powell as Tyler Owens) is a good ol' boy with a lot of social media followers and his face on a T-shirt, and he does things the old way, no PhDs required!
The most intriguing part is that Kate might have figured out how to "disrupt" a tornado, but she done messed up last time.
Who but the good ol' boy to give her another chance?
Twisters is directed by Lee Isaac Chung (Minari) from a screenplay by Mark L. Smith (The Midnight Sky), with a nod to Michael Crichton, who co-wrote the first Twister. It also stars Brandon Perea (Nope), Sasha Lane (American Honey), Daryl McCormack (Peaky Blinders), Kiernan Shipka (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), Nik Dodani (Atypical) and Maura Tierney (Beautiful Boy). You can ride your fears right into the theater on July 19th.[end-mark]
First sasquatches, then space invaders. David and Nathan Zellner recently released Sasquatch Sunset, a very weird movie in which Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keogh starred as, yes, sasquatches; now, they're planning to follow it up with an alien invasion comedy starring Cate Blanchett as... well, I'm going to let Variety explain:
Alpha Gang follows alien invaders sent on a mission to conquer Earth. “Disguised in human form as an armed and dangerous 1950’s leather-clad biker gang, they show no mercy… until they catch the most toxic, contagious human disease of all: emotion,” reads the synopsis.
Blanchett, apparently, will be playing the leader of said gang. So yes: leather-clad, armed and dangerous Cate Blanchett should be coming to a screen near you.
It's a fun turn for the former Queen Elizabeth, no? And her outfits for this might be almost as good as everything she got to wear in Ocean's 8. Blanchett has, of course, been nominated for a whole pile of Oscars, and won two: Best Supporting Actress for The Aviator, and Best Actress for Blue Jasmine. She has played too many excellent roles to list here, but it would be silly not to mention her turns as Hela (Thor: Ragnarok, pictured above) and Galadriel (several Lord of the Rings movies, including, alas, those dreadfully long Hobbits).
Alpha Gang is expected to begin filming later this year. Further casting announcements will be watched with great curiosity.[end-mark]
It is almost time for the annual Cannes Film Festival, which means that a lot of uncertain movie news is in the air: Movies that may or may not get picked up, after festival screenings, for distribution; movies that may or may not be coming together for future productions. A lot of possibility is floating about, some of it more enticing than other bits. But this one is quite intriguing: Deadline reports that Greta Lee (Past Lives; Russian Doll, pictured above) and Kingsley Ben-Adir (Barbie; Secret Invasion) are in talks to star in 11817, a sci-fi horror film from director Louis Leterrier.
Leterrier is, depending on your personal predilections, either an interesting director of large-scale action films, or the guy who made the Ed Norton Hulk movie. His resume includes episodes of Lupin; the delightfully silly The Transporter; Fast X, which really ought to have been called Fast10 Your Seatbelts; and also the 2010 Clash of the Titans.
11817, which sounds more like a zip code than a film title, is written by Matthew Robinson (Love and Monsters). According to Deadline, "The film watches as inexplicable forces trap a family of four inside their house indefinitely. As both modern luxuries and life or death essentials begin to run out, the family must learn how to be resourceful to survive and outsmart who — or what — is keeping them trapped…"
Actor Omar Sy (Lupin) is among the film's producers, along with Leterrier and Thomas Benski (a producer on The Northman, Pig, and Midsommar, among others); the three have a production company called Carousel Studios, and this film looks to be their first project.
No production timeline has been announced.[end-mark]
Welcome to Close Reads! Leah Schnelbach and guest authors will dig into the tiny, weird moments of pop culture—from books to theme songs to viral internet hits—that have burrowed into our minds, found rent-stabilized apartments, started community gardens, and refused to be forced out by corporate interests. This time out, Leah Blaine pulls her well-worn Sunfire Romances down from the shelf to look at the importance of an innocuous book cover.
As a young reader, I had the typical rotation of books befitting a young girl from the suburbs: Baby-Sitters Club, Sweet Valley High, and various romance books. These books reaffirmed my own life and looked like mine did: girls in school grappling with friendships and crushes, parents and homework, expectations to work for good grades, to be well-mannered, and to someday grow up to be a mother and perhaps a teacher/nurse/secretary. One series, however, blew my world wide open and the books looked even more innocuous than those prototypical books churned out for voracious 1980s book girls.
Covers as cover, indeed.
Sunfire Romance books were written by a collection of writers under pen names that all followed the exact same formula: a teen girl from a specific historical era with dreams of her own must choose from two very different suitors. There are glaring offenses in the book that cannot be ignored (unsurprisingly, a la American Dolls, Corey, the black heroine of her book, has escaped from slavery). And yet, in a time and place where racial, social, and economic boundaries were strictly drawn, as they were in my time and place under the Cold War and Reagan, the fact that historical characters ventured to friendships and even romances with people different than them was revolutionary to a girl in a safe box made of ticky tacky.
From the covers alone, these are books that should have merely fanned the romantic passions of teen girls. A young woman stood at the center with her name, always the title, emblazoned above her while a male suitor stood at each shoulder (there would be a third suitor in the foreground for some lucky heroines). They would be dressed in easily identifiable historical clothing with a scene from the book depicted, like a kiss in front of a stagecoach or forlornly leaning on the rail of the Mayflower. There is nothing from the covers that hinted at the absolute agents of chaos living in the pages.
Because this is where the formula ends. Each heroine had her own dreams and desires. Some wanted to enter the accepted vocations of women of their era; plenty wanted to be teachers and nurses and many wanted to marry and have children. Others, however, wanted to work in the circus, be a war spy, or become a journalist. One young woman, Caroline, cut her hair, dressed as a man, and went by Caro (a family name, she said) in order to make her way to California for the Gold Rush like her brothers. Another, Renee, wanted to be a reporter in New York so badly she braved the Great Blizzard of 1888 to earn her first byline.
Their choices for romantic partners were typically confined to a hometown boy and one new to town–and, again, this is where the formula ended. The hometown boy didn’t always expect her to settle down and raise a family; sometimes they wanted to travel, leave the dust of their town behind them. The mysterious (because of course he was) stranger wasn’t always interested in blowing in and out with the wind, taking her along with him to exciting and different locales; sometimes he wanted to settle and confine her to where he thought she belonged.
The dreams of the heroines and their romantic partners’ ideals would also collide just as much as they would match. There was no formula for their alchemy and each heroine had to grapple with how to have her romance (the point of the books after all), but also stay true to who she wanted to be beyond the romance. Renee found fulfillment and success with her new career only to have her boyfriend expect her to leave it all behind to marry him and start a family. Caro, at least, got to keep her hair short and wear pants when her love proposed a life together; he loved her as she wanted to be, not his version of her.
Credit: Leah Blaine
And this is why books are banned. Not because they teach children how to rebel, teenagers know full well how to rebel, but because they show that the choices laid out by their family and community aren’t choices at all, but rather acceptable options already chosen for them. The idea that children would dare to choose something not offered to them is downright offensive to many parents and must be avoided at all costs hence micromanaging even the fiction they may come across.
This is what makes the Sunfire Romances so revolutionary for their time. Because if parents knew what these romance books were doing to their girls, the girls they wanted to grow up to organize bake sales and preside over the PTA (because obviously they would only be wives and mothers) then these books would be at the top of the banned list. They were an instruction manual on how to choose your own path. Taken alone, they were harmless stories of finding a husband. Taken together, they’re a road map to finding a life free of restrictive expectations. Rife with feminism under the corsets and petticoats, each girl was able to choose the elements to keep and the ones to leave behind. Some chose traditional paths and some did not, but every time, the thought and care that went into choosing for herself was evident. They weren’t merely rebelling against expectations for rebellion’s sake, not that there’s anything wrong with that if you ask me, but considering how the expectations of others and their own desires shaped their choices so as to be true to themselves.
Never was this more evident than in how we talked about these books that we devoured so quickly. For romance books, we spent very little time talking about the romance. No, we talked about how we looked up the Johnston flood after reading about Jennie (who knew Morse code and we needed to learn that, too; I can still tap out “hi” because of her) or about women's suffrage thanks to Laura (whose mother told her to stop worrying about her rights because she needed to marry and marry fast). It’s unsurprising how many of those friends went on to be excellent researchers as this was pre-whole world in our palm days; we could use a card catalog and navigate a library with our eyes closed by the time we left high school because looking up “how many women spies were there during the American Revolution?” (thanks for your service, Sabrina) or “what were conditions like in textile mills?” (good job joining the strike, Joanna) took up most afternoons and were never evident from the covers. We talked about not only the historical events, but how young the heroines were–that was something slightly mind-blowing to girls who had to be home when the street lights flickered. Margaret left Chicago for Nebraska by herself at 15 to teach in a one room schoolhouse while Merrie stowed away on the Mayflower. Again, line the books up together and it makes for a pretty impressive list of rabble-rousing young women who also liked to be twirled about and kissed and given flowers.
There is a direct line, then, from these covers to the Bridgerton screen adaptations and what romance readers have known for years: a cover that extols the virtues of a hetero romance may just be the undoing of women's roles and expectations.
We're thrilled to share an excerpt from The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love, a historical fantasy rom-com by India Holton, out from Berkley on July 23rd.
Beth Pickering is on the verge of finally capturing the rare deathwhistler bird when Professor Devon Lockley swoops in, capturing both her bird and her imagination like a villain. Albeit a handsome and charming villain, but that’s beside the point. As someone highly educated in the ruthless discipline of ornithology, Beth knows trouble when she sees it, and she is determined to keep her distance from Devon.
For his part, Devon has never been more smitten than when he first set eyes on Professor Beth Pickering. She’s so pretty, so polite, so capable of bringing down a fiery, deadly bird using only her wits. In other words, an angel. Devon understands he must not get close to her, however, since they’re professional rivals.
When a competition to become Birder of the Year by capturing an endangered caladrius bird is announced, Beth and Devon are forced to team up to have any chance of winning. Now keeping their distance becomes a question of one bed or two. But they must take the risk, because fowl play is afoot, and they can’t trust anyone else—for all may be fair in love and war, but this is ornithology.
An ornithologist must be proficient in the three fundamentals of fieldwork: finding a bird, identifying a bird, and getting the hell away from that bird before it eats you.
Birds Through a Sherry Glass, H.A. Quirm
All along the streets to the museum, Beth met no trouble. Her plain brown coat, accompanied by a small hat, gloves, and air of cultivated intelligence, triggered fear in any man who glanced her way: one catcall, and she might educate them.
Slipping past museum staff to enter the archives with the speed and stealthiness of a well-trained ornithologist, she also met no trouble.
Wending a narrow path through shelves and cabinets to the back of the chamber, she met no—
“Hello.”
Beth stopped so abruptly her hat shuddered, and only because of her stiffened posture did it retain its place upon her head. “You!”
Devon Lockley gave her a lithe smile. “You,” he replied, his tone more friendly and thus far more dangerous than hers. Worse, he’d removed his dinner jacket and unknotted his tie. The bare, olive-toned skin visible where he’d unfastened his shirt collar took “trouble” and dunked it in a glass of hot, rum-infused devilry. Light from the small, dusty windows slid across his mouth languorously, stroking the smile.
Beth looked away, clearing her throat.
Shelves of boxes stood to the right of them, and to the left a row of specimen cabinets. A wide, shallow drawer lay open in the cabinet directly beside Devon, revealing assorted birdcalls, bird lures, and bird thingamajigs whose purpose had long since been forgotten.
His expression tilted with sardonic humor. “I suspect you’re not in the basement of the Museum of Magical Birds for the purpose of an afternoon stroll, Miss Pickering. You’ve come for the caladrius call.”
Beth applied to her sense of decorum for a suitable response, but it took one look at the man and turned away, busying itself with dusting its precious antique collection of curtsies. Left to her own devices, she gave him a second, considering look.
He was implausibly handsome for a university professor, who in Beth’s experience were a pallid lot, rather musty, with a constant yearning in their eyes for dinner, wine, and their latest lecture to magically write itself. But if there was any yearning done in regard to Devon Lockley, it was almost certainly not by him but toward him. Not that Beth felt any such yearning. Heavens no! She was far too sensible for that. The riotous sensations in her stomach were merely due to French tea. She also suspected him of possessing masculine wiles. He probably kept them up his sleeve or in a trouser pocket—upon which thought, Beth glanced at said pocket, and managed to prevent herself from blushing only by dint of general aggravation. She hauled her vision up by the scruff of its neck and discovered Devon watching her smugly, as if he could guess her thoughts and was considering whether to reach his naked hand into that pocket and bring out something truly scandalous indeed. Her aggravation increased by several notches.
“I am here to do some research,” she said, silently reassuring herself that it was the whitest of lies; beige at most. “However, this seems a convenient opportunity to apologize to you for our fracas in Spain.”
“No need,” Devon answered easily. In response, Beth’s aggravation forgot about climbing notches and took flight instead.
“Absolutely there is a need! I was an ill-mannered scoundrel of the worst kind to assault you with a parasol!”
“You ought to be stern and judgmental.” She thrust out a gloved hand. “I insist upon apologizing. Kindly frown at me and then shake hands, so we may reestablish a civil rivalry between us.”
“All right,” he agreed—then ruined it by adding, “My pleasure.” He gave her a frown that was clearly wearing nothing more than a wicked grin beneath its coat. But before Beth could summon offense, he took her hand.
Immediately, she knew she’d made a tactical error. His bare fingers were warm even through the kid leather of her glove. His grip was firm in a way that made the description “firm” seem altogether salacious. An electric sensation rushed through her body, setting off alarms hither and yon. All that saved her was remembering the job she’d come to do.
“How do you know about the caladrius call?” she asked. Devon shrugged. “You told me.” “I beg your pardon—?—!”
“Well, to be precise, you told my spy, Lady Trimble, who then told me.”
“Egad!” Beth gasped. “That’s cheating!”
“Come now, Miss Pickering,” he said, laughing. “All may be fair in love and war, but this is ornithology. Cheating is practically one of our scientific principles. Or did they not teach you that at—let me guess, Liverpool University?”
He wanted to aggravate her. “Oxford,” she answered in her politest tone. After all, she could climb trees without showing her petticoats and wrangle birds into cages without swearing. No man was going to disturb her equanimity.
He smiled.
“Villain!” she remonstrated at once, before she even knew what she was doing. And once she’d got going, alas, there seemed no stopping her. “Don’t try that charm on me, if you please. I will not succumb like some—some—liberal arts undergraduate.”
“If you say so, Miss Pickering,” he answered, still smiling. “I do beg your pardon. And while I can’t apologize for using Lady Trimble to spy on you, I will point out that at least I chose to run here and find the call before you might, rather than steal it from you outright. Not that such virtue did me any good.” He frowned askance at the open drawer. “This collection looks like a pack of first-year students have held a keg party among it.”
The apology, such as it was, mollified her. “Perhaps we aren’t the first to come searching,” she suggested in a calmer tone. “Hippolyta cannot be the only one to know about the call.”
“Which also means others might appear at any moment.” Devon glanced over her shoulder as if expecting a sudden influx of ornithologists bearing lockpicks, pistols, and emergency marriage certificates for use upon discovering a bachelor and spinster alone together. Beth’s nerves ruffled all over again. Really, this encounter was going to drive her to drink, and she did not think there was enough tea in all of Paris for the purpose.
“I suggest a compromise,” she said. “I will search for the call, and you will stand guard, and once I’ve found it we will leave quietly so as to not draw attention to ourselves. What say you?”
“I say you need a better dictionary,” Devon replied, grinning. He looked over her shoulder again; glancing back, Beth thought she saw a darkness move between shelves, but she blinked and it was gone.
“I’m being paranoid,” Devon murmured, shaking his head. “How about I look for the call, you do the same, and may the best birder win?” “And when I win?” she asked cautiously.
“When I win, we’ll agree to disagree, and depart without further argument.”
“Very well.” She turned toward the cabinet—only to discover she and Devon were still holding hands. He realized at the same moment and released her just as she was pulling away. She rubbed her hand against her waist. Devon shoved his through his hair. Stepping apart, they set to opening cabinet drawers.
“I admit I’m a little daunted, competing with Britain’s youngest-ever professor,” Devon said as they worked.
Beth glanced at him sidelong. Was he mocking her? Or had that been a note of sincerity in his voice? If he’d whistled a birdsong, she’d have been able to interpret it at once, but her ability with human conversation was mediocre at best, and this one certainly had her floundering. She decided to retreat, as usual, behind niceness.
“I’m daunted myself,” she said, “competing with an academic wunderkind.”
“That’s merely a rumor started by my thesis examination panel because they wanted to get away early for a fishing trip.”
Beth stared at him with astonishment. “Really?”
He just grinned in reply, his dark eyes glimmering. Instantly, Beth’s aggravation discarded niceness and leaped once more into the breach, swinging its fists wildly and suggesting she close the wall up with a dead professor. Turning away, she rummaged through the birdcalls, not even seeing them.
For a while, Devon searched quietly alongside. But all too soon they were elbowing each other… leaning past each other to grab at something that looked like a possibility… humphing and tsking and smacking at hands… completely missing the caladrius call lying among several other antique whistles… then seeing it finally and both snatching at it with such urgency they knocked it clear off the tray. It flew past them, fell to the floor, and rolled through a gap between two shelving units.
“Now look what you’ve done!” they said simultaneously. “It wasn’t my fault!” they replied in chorus.
And shoving at each other, they squeezed their way through the gap to crouch in the dark narrow space behind, groping around the floor for the little wooden call. Thighs pressed against each other; shoulders rubbed; etiquette rules exploded left, right, and center. Finally, Beth’s fingers stumbled upon the call, and she clutched it in triumph.
Unfortunately, Devon did the same. “Let go!” she hissed at him.
“You first!” he hissed back. “How dare—”
“Shut up.”
Beth gasped in genuine shock. “I beg your pardon!”
He relinquished the call, but only so as to slap his hand over her mouth. Beth’s heart leaped with what was almost certainly alarm and not delighted excitement.
“Shh!” he whispered. “I heard something.”
Beth nodded. Devon moved his hand away, and together they shifted apart two boxes on the shelf at eye level so they could peer through to the passageway beyond.
Tap-tap.
Beth slapped her own hand over her mouth. A bird was tiptoeing delicately over the dusty floor—a dull brown bird, not much bigger than a magpie, with dainty legs and a small black beak. Vanellus carnivorus, her brain automatically recited.
Rabid flesh-eating lapwing.
It was the most vicious, deadly little bird this side of the Mediterranean. With scant effort it could bring down a grown man and the horse beneath him, and the servants attending him, and their horses too. Almost its entire population had been exterminated, leaving only two specimens in the highest-security aviaries.
And one in this basement.
Suddenly, Beth could not breathe. This was not due to her hand over her mouth; rather, she simply could not remember the process of inhaling air. The lapwing’s claws tapped gently against the floorboards, providing an eerily calm counterpoint to her crashing heartbeat. She and Devon were sitting ducks, with no easy way of escape. As it passed where they crouched behind the shelf, there came a tiny click of fang against beak, and the warm vanilla scent the bird used to attract prey. Instinct urged Beth to follow that scent, to tuck herself into coziness beneath the lapwing’s soft wing. Intelligence managed to restrain her, however, and the lapwing continued farther down the passageway, its lure diminishing as it went. Beth and Devon glanced at each other, exhaling with relief—
The lapwing froze. It cocked its head.
“Damn!” Devon swore. Grabbing Beth’s arm, he hauled her up with him and pushed her toward the gap in the shelving. “Run!”
The television series Snowpiercer has had a rocky journey. The show’s first three seasons ran on TNT, but the network chose to not air the already-shot fourth and final season as part of the large number of tax write-offs that came with the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
Luckily for us, the show found a new home at AMC, with that network saying they would release the final episodes sometime in early 2025. The network announced today, however, that we would be able to see the fourth season—as well as the three seasons that came before it—in mere months.
For those who need a refresher, the Snowpiercer series takes place seven years after the world has become an arctic wasteland and focuses on a 1001-car train of survivors that continually run on tracks laid across the globe. It’s based on the graphic novel series by Jacques Lob and Jean-Marc Rochette, and the film from Oscar-winner Bong Joon Ho.
Season three saw the train cars split into two factions, with one led by Melanie Cavill (Jennifer Connelly), who wants to maintain the status quo, and the other by Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs), who wants to explore new territory.
Credit: AMC
“We can’t wait to share the final season of this thrill ride of a series with this vibrant fan community and new viewers starting July 21 on AMC and AMC+, with plenty of time built in to catch up on previous seasons on a variety of on demand platforms and AMC+ before then,” Courtney Thomasma, Executive Vice President of Streaming for AMC Networks, said in a statement shared with Deadline. “Snowpiercer is an entertaining drama with a great cast and seeing how the ride ends will be a highlight of summer viewing worthy of a 1001-car train.”
The first two seasons of Snowpiercer will start streaming on AMC+ beginning June 1, 2024, with the third season premiering on the platform on June 8, 2024.
The fourth and final season will premiere on July 21, 2024 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on AMC and AMC+.
The network also released first-look photos of the final season, which you can see above and below. [end-mark]
We're thrilled to share an excerpt from The North Wind, a romantic fantasy by Alexandria Warwick, out from Saga Press on May 21st.
Wren of Edgewood is no stranger to suffering. With her parents gone, it’s Wren’s responsibility to ensure she and her sister survive the harsh and endless winter, but if the legends are to be believed, their home may not be safe for much longer.
For three hundred years, the land surrounding Edgewood has been encased in ice as the Shade, a magical barrier that protects the townsfolk from the Deadlands beyond, weakens. Only one thing can stop the Shade’s fall: the blood of a mortal woman bound in wedlock to the North Wind, a dangerous immortal whose heart is said to be as frigid as the land he rules. And the time has come to choose his bride.
When the North Wind sets his eyes on Wren’s sister, Wren will do anything to save her—even if it means sacrificing herself in the process. But mortal or not, Wren won’t go down without a fight…
The North Wind’s welcome involves a grand feast held in his honor. In theory, there is to be a decadent meal of many courses, as if to be chosen, stolen away to the Deadlands, is cause for celebration. But the reality is Edgewood fades year by year. Nothing grows in the frozen earth. The livestock, except for a few malnourished goats, have all perished.
Thus, this grand feast is only slightly better than paltry. Edgewood has no massive ballroom to host the king, no suckling, spit-roasted pig or extravagant spread of candied meats or diced roots. Instead, hard, pitted evergreen berries are collected and mashed into an acidic sauce the color of blood. There is soup: salted water flavored with wilted herbs. The meat—old goat—is the most unappetizing thing I’ve seen in my life.
I hope the king chokes on it.
The fare may not be to his liking, but he doesn’t come for the food. The seven women who drew short straws, all lovely and pristine, currently gather in the town meeting hall, where a long table has been set for the evening meal, a fire warming the stone hearth. They are dressed in their finest: woolen gowns cinched at the waist; hair washed and combed and braided; long, thick stockings and tired dress shoes. They have concealed their wind-chafed skin with oils and colored creams. I smile wryly. My imperfection cannot be so easily masked.
“How do I look?”
I turn at Elora’s voice. A blue, knee-length dress I stitched years ago hugs her slender frame, and black stockings showcase willowy legs. Curled, dark lashes shield her downward gaze. That rosebud mouth twitches with nerves.
Despite my attempts to steady my voice, it croaks out. “Like Ma.”
At this, her eyes fill. Elora nods, just once.
The longer I stare at my sister, the more intensely my stomach cramps. He will take her. She is too lovely to escape his notice.
Miss Millie, a middle-aged woman who loves gossiping almost as much as she loves straying from her husband, emerges from the kitchen carrying two wooden pitchers. Bloodshot eyes and ruddy cheeks reveal her increasingly distraught state. Her eldest daughter is one of the seven. “Glasses,” she snaps at me.
I fill the drinking glasses with water. My hands tremble, blast them. The women huddle in one corner like a herd of deer in the cold. They don’t speak. What is there to say? By the end of this meal, one of them will be chosen, and that woman will not return.
Miss Millie’s youngest, a boy of twelve, lights the last of the lamps. Beyond the shuttered windows, the townsfolk gather in the square, awaiting the king’s arrival. His last visit occurred more than thirty years ago, before my sister and I were even born. He took a woman named Ada across the Shade. She was only eighteen.
As I’m smoothing the wrinkles from the white tablecloth, I hear it—the clop of hooves on stone.
The women press closer together, grabbing each other’s hands. No one utters a sound. Even their breathing has ceased. Elora’s gaze meets mine across the room.
I could do it. Take my sister’s hand, flee through the kitchen, and pray the snow hides our tracks from the villagers who would be sent to bring Elora to justice.
“Places,” Miss Millie hisses, motioning for the women to take their seats at the table. Noise clangs in the air—shifting chairs and whispering cloth and the dreaded clop, clop, clop, closer and closer.
I’m halfway to Elora’s side when Miss Millie snags my arm. Her fingernails bite painfully. I can’t pry them loose. “Let me go.”
“It’s too late,” she breathes. Clumps of gray-streaked hair stick to her round, sweaty face. The lines bracketing her mouth deepen.
“There’s still time. Lend us your horse. I’ll take your daughter with us—”
Footsteps.
Miss Millie shoves me into a corner as the front door opens. Its hinges squeal like a mutilated animal. Around the table, the women flinch, shrinking back into their chairs as a gale bursts through the doorway, guttering half the lamps and plunging the room into near-darkness. I freeze against the back wall, mouth dry.
In steps a towering figure, etched black against the shadows. Cloaked, hooded, alone.
He stoops to enter the room, for the buildings are constructed with low slanted ceilings to conserve heat. When he straightens, the crown of his head brushes the rafters, darkness coiling inside his hood. Two pricks of brightness glow within.
Miss Millie, bless her heart, shuffles forward. Terror has bleached her face white. “My lord?”
He lifts a hand. Someone gasps.
But he only pushes back his hood, revealing a countenance of such agonizing beauty that I can only look at him for so long before I’m forced to turn away. And yet, only seconds pass before my attention returns, drawn by some unnamed compulsion to study him in greater detail.
His face appears to have been hewn from alabaster. Low lamplight illuminates the smooth plane of his forehead, the angled cheekbones and straight nose, that jaw of cut-glass. And his mouth . . . well. I’ve yet to see a more feminine mouth on a man. The coal shade of his hair drinks in the light, having been pulled into a short tail at the back of his neck. His eyes, the lambent blue of glacial ice, glow with unnerving intensity.
My hand clenches around one of the knives arranged on the table. I dare not breathe. I’m not sure I can, given the circumstances. The Frost King is the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on, and the most wretched. It takes everything in me not to drive this blade into his heart. Assuming he has one.
He takes another step into the room, and the women scramble to their feet. The Frost King has yet to speak. There is no need. He has the women’s attention, and mine. We have prepared for this.
Judging by the cool disgust curling his upper lip, he is displeased by the lack of welcome. Tight black gloves encase his hands in smooth leather. Wide shoulders stretch the heavy material of his cloak, which he removes to reveal a pressed tunic the color of a rain cloud, silver buttons stamping a line toward the collar strangling his neck. Below, he wears fitted charcoal breeches and weathered boots. A dagger hangs from his waist.
My attention drifts to his right hand, which curves around the haft of a spear bearing a stone point. I’m positive he wasn’t holding that a moment ago. When it vanishes a heartbeat later, many of the women sigh in relief.
Releasing my grip on the knife, I let the utensil drop onto the ground. The clatter startles Miss Millie into action. She takes his cloak, hangs it on a peg beside the door, then pulls out a chair at the head of the table. Its legs scrape against the floor, and the Frost King sits.
The women sit as well.
“Welcome to Edgewood, my lord,” Miss Millie offers quietly. Her attention flits to the woman sitting on his immediate left—her daughter. The women drew sticks to determine which unlucky souls sat closest to him during the meal. Elora, thankfully, is seated at the far end of the table.
“We hope you enjoy the meal we’ve prepared for you.” The king scans the fare, unimpressed. “Unfortunately, our harvest has been lean in recent years.”
What she means is nonexistent.
“The soup is one of our specialties—”
He lifts a hand in silence, and Miss Millie’s voice peters out, her jowls wobbling as she swallows. And that he seems to decide, is that.
It is the longest, most excruciating dinner in existence. Glass clinks as Miss Millie and I refill drinks, replace sullied napkins. No one speaks. The women I can understand; no one wishes to draw the king’s attention. Our guest has no excuse, however. Can’t he see we have gifted him what little food we can spare? And not even a word of acknowledgment?
Elora barely touches her food. She hunches over her plate in an attempt to make herself smaller—my recommendation—but she does not escape the Frost King’s notice. For that is where his gaze alights, time and again.
Slowly, my nerves fray to ruin. When the pressure in my chest threatens to squash my lungs, I retreat to the kitchen, fumble for the flask tucked into my waistband, and take a healthy swallow. My eyes sting from the burn that feels like deliverance, like salvation. We should have fled when we had the chance. It is too late now.
Taking a deep breath, I return to the dining hall. As the dinner crawls by, I pour the wine. The women guzzle it down, glass after glass, red droplets slicking their bloodless lips, cheeks deeply flushed. My throat begins to ache with violent craving. Halfway through the meal and my flask lies empty.
The Frost King barely touches his wine. It’s just as well. I have absolutely zero desire to serve him in any way, shape, or form, unless it’s to show him the door.
Unfortunately, Miss Millie doesn’t share the sentiment. “My lord, is the wine not to your liking?” Her show of concern makes me want to vomit. I’m sure she believes if she treats him kindly, he’ll pass over her daughter for another.
In answer, he brings the scarlet liquid to his mouth and drains the glass, eyes flaring dully above the rim. It’s as though his pupils hold a remnant of light, rather than light itself.
That leaves me to see to his needs. Moving to the Frost King’s side, I begin refilling his glass. In the process, our arms collide, and the wine slops onto his lap.
Ice in my blood, in my veins.
The Frost King’s gaze is a slow, crawling thing that drags from the stain spreading across his tunic to the bottle I still hold, before eventually locking onto my face. His pale blue eyes exude a devouring cold that creeps across my puckered scar. The old, toughened skin has long since lost sensation, but I swear it prickles beneath his scrutiny, as though his attention is a physical touch.
“Apologize to the king!” Miss Millie demands shrilly.
What is a little wine compared to the loss of a life?
No, I think I will keep my apology to myself. I can’t imagine it’s worth much to him anyway. “Only if he apologizes for stealing our women.”
Someone gasps. The king studies me as he would a small animal, but I am no prey.
“My lord, I apologize for her absolutely wretched behavior—”
He lifts one long-fingered hand, his focus wholly on me. Miss Millie falls silent. “What is your name?”
The title he bears extends to his voice as well. It is low, deep, riddled with a chilling lack of emotion.
At my silence, a few women shift uncomfortably in their chairs. The temperature continues to plummet despite the fire. The North Wind may be a god, but I will not break. If nothing else, I have my pride.
“I see.” He taps a fingertip against the table.
“Wren, my lord. Her name is Wren!” Elora leans forward in her chair, fingers gripping the arms. A choked exhalation follows her outburst.
My teeth grind together in frustration even as my stomach hollows out. This is exactly what I was afraid of: Elora and her soft heart, an utterance that will surely draw the king’s notice. If I hadn't let my emotions cloud my judgment, this could have been prevented.
“Wren,” he says. Never have I heard so elegant a word. “Like the songbird.”
There are no songbirds in the Gray. They all perished or flew elsewhere.
After a lingering study of my face, his attention shifts to Elora. I want to claw his eyes out for how he drinks her in. “There is a certain likeness to your features.”
“Yes, my lord.” Elora bows her head in a gesture of respect. I could slap her for it. “We are sisters. Identical twins. I am Elora.”
A peculiar tilt to his head as he compares us. I am sure he finds me lacking.
“Stand up,” he demands.
Elora pushes her chair back as my voice whips out. “Sit.”
She stills, hands curled around the edge of the table. Her attention flits between me and the Frost King. Meanwhile, Miss Millie appears on the verge of passing out.
An unbalanced light flickers in his narrow pupils, like a candle wavering in darkness. He stands in one fluid motion, startling me. I imagine no one has challenged his word before. No one has been foolish enough to try.
“Come,” he says in a voice like thunder, and Elora shuffles toward him, meek and spineless. The sight of her defeat rips through me. How dare he? We are not chattel. We are people with beating hearts in our chests and breath in our lungs and lives we’ve managed to carve from this cursed, frozen existence.
As Elora stops in front of him, he lifts her chin with a finger and says, “You, Elora of Edgewood, have been chosen, and you will serve me until the end of your days.”
It's a smaller story, so it gets a smaller series: The Hollywood Reporter has the news that the next Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, will have a mere six episodes in its first season. The series is based on a trio of novellas, so presumably that makes a certain kind of sense.
The show was previously going by the slightly more ponderous title A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, but apparently has dropped those last three words, at least for the time being.
What's more, Owen Harris has joined the adaptation as an executive producer and director; he will tackle the first three episodes. Harris famously directed Black Mirror’s "San Junipero," several episodes of Brave New World, and—most importantly, in my book—four episodes of the criminally under-watched and entirely wonderful Mrs. Davis.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms recently cast its two leads, enlisting Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as his young squire Egg. (Anyone familiar with the regularly recurring names of the world of Game of Thrones can probably guess what "Egg" is a nickname for. Here's a hint: There are a lot of Targaryens.)
Here's the official synopsis:
A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros… a young, naïve but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall (Claffey), and his diminutive squire, Egg (Ansell). Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne, and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes, and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.
George R.R. Martin is writer and executive producer for the series, which also has Ira Parker, Ryan Condal, Vince Gerardis, Owen Harris, and Sarah Bradshaw as executive producers
No premiere date has been announced, but the show is expected to arrive next year.[end-mark]
