Warning: this Inside No. 9 review contains spoilers. Alfred Hitchcock and co. needed just shy of two hours for Rear Window; Steve Pemberton, Reece Shearsmith and director Al Campbell nailed their version in under 29 minutes and got a great gag in at the end.  Inside No. 9 perfection? I’d argue so. Show me one second wasted in this expertly constructed half hour. From Larry’s “best to use a brick” introduction, all the way to the Netflix punchline, this was pretty unassailable storytelling. It had comedy, tension, surprise, very decent guest stars and a formal ..read more

X-Men ’97 just finished its first season, one of the best things the MCU has ever released. Yet, way back in 1992, Fox Kids almost killed its predecessor before it had a chance to evolve. In the new documentary special Assembled: X-Men ’97, three of the chief creatives on X-Men: The Animated Series reveal their struggles getting the show off the ground. Producer and director Larry Houston recalls working under Marvel Productions president Margaret Loesch, who always championed the X-Men throughout the ’80s, resulting in misfires like Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends or Pryde of the X-Men but ..read more

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all over our magazine stories here. One of the joys of being a long-time comics reader is coming across ideas that are equal degrees clever and obvious. It’s safe to say Jed MacKay’s idea to pit Moon Knight, the avatar of an Egyptian god, against a vampire pyramid scheme is one of those.  We saw Marc Spector and his gang of misfits from the Midnight Mission take on an Instagram influencer-esque vampire (peddling eternal undeath instead of essential oils) making a play for control of New York at nigh ..read more

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all over our magazine stories here. For Jeff Nichols, The Bikeriders’ long road trip began with a handful of photographs. Among them in grainy black and white was a lone figure, captured in blurred motion and with his head turned away as he zoomed across the Ohio River. The only clear details were the leathered texture of his jacket and the gleam flashing off his Harley’s steel. When discovering this image and many like it in 2003, Nichols was in no way a motorcycle connoisseur. To this day, big bikes te ..read more

This article appears in the new issue of DEN OF GEEK magazine. You can read all over our magazine stories here. “At last, we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi. At last, we will have our revenge,” Darth Maul says to his shadowy Sith master in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Twenty-five years after that prequel film set the stage for the rise of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, the new live-action series The Acolyte will show us the origin of the Sith plan to destroy the Jedi once and for all. That story actually begins 100 years before the prequel trilogy, when the Sit ..read more

Meals eaten off lettuce leaves, walking barefoot on paths made of sand, furious arguments taking place entirely in sign language. A Quiet Place and A Quiet Place: Part II introduced us to a world of oppressive silence through the eyes of the people who had lived long enough to learn those lessons. It is a very different world to the one at the opening of A Quiet Place: Day One. “There’s a lot more sound. We’re in New York, so as you can imagine, it is one of the loudest, most bustling cities in the world,” says Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Sam in the horror prequel. “That is what spoke to me abou ..read more

Before House of the Dragon season 2 began filming, showrunner Ryan Condal assembled the actors of the Game of Thrones prequel to view a simple slideshow. The subject of this presentation? Dragons, naturally. The dragon riders needed to get acquainted with their bonded beasts, as they’ll never actually meet them in the scaly flesh.  “These poor actors climb up on a saddle but they never interact with the creature they’re supposed to have this close bond with,” Condal says. “If you believe Westerosi historical propaganda, Aegon [II] and Sunfyre famously had the closest bond between dragon a ..read more

Watching the latest trailer for Elden Ring‘s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC will likely make you feel like Homer Simpson watching Twin Peaks. It’s beautiful, it’s brilliant, but, if you’re being honest with yourself, you probably have no idea what is going on. Well, join the club. While there are aspects of that trailer that are seemingly meant to remain unanswerable for the time being, there are other elements of the preview that are slightly easier to speculate about. At the very least, we can give you a little context about what this trailer is (besides incredibly well-made). Essentially, the l ..read more

LEGO is returning to the wonderful world of Oz for sets based on the upcoming Wicked film adaptation of the iconic Broadway show. “The LEGO Group and Universal Products & Experiences are bringing to life 4 new LEGO Wicked sets featuring mini-dolls, launching 1st October 2024! The ‘popular’ musical phenomenon, Wicked, becomes a two-part gravity-defying cinematic event with the first film arriving in cinemas on November 27th and the second coming in autumn 2025. LEGO Group will introduce four sets inspired by the first film that will allow fans to delve deeper into some of the most iconic sc ..read more

The latest trailer for Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree (the game’s first and only piece of DLC) has just been released. While the trailer doesn’t include any new gameplay footage, it does reveal a bit more about the DLC’s story and world. Perhaps more importantly to some, it reveals where you can pre-order Shadow of the Erdtree and how much its various editions will cost. Let’s start simple. Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree will be released on June 21 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Windows PC. The base version of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC will cost $39 ..read more