Andy Serkis’ live-action take on The Jungle Book is getting nearer, and we’ve got the first full trailer to prove it. 

Now heading to Netflix (before a brief planned theatrical run) on the 7^thof December, the film looks a very different from the other adaptations of Rudyard Kipling’s book, including the 1967 Disney classic and the 2016 remake. 

Serkis’ version looks to be darker, grittier and slightly more faithful to the source material – although the new trailer does show that the film is delving more into Mowgli’s (Rohan Chand) backstory and adding a lot more human characters to the tale of a boy raised by animals in the jungles of India. 

Serkis is directing as well as playing Baloo the bear (who now has a pretty thick cockney accent), adding his performance capture magic alongside the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch (Shere Khan the tiger), Christian Bale (Bagheera the panther), Cate Blanchett (Kaa the snake), Tom Hollander (Tabaqui the hyena) and Peter Mullan, Naomie Harris, Eddie Marsan and Jack Reynor (all wolves). 

As expected from Serkis, the digital animal acting looks pretty impressive already, and it’s nice to see a version of Kipling’s book that doesn’t include any songs for a change.  

“We avoid comparisons to the other movie, and it’s a relief not to have the pressure,” Serkis told Deadline, talking about the move to Netflix. “This is a darker telling… It’s really not meant for young kids, though I think it’s possible that 10 or above can watch it. It was always meant to be PG-13, and this allows us to go deeper, with darker themes, to be scary and frightening in moments. The violence between animals is not gratuitous, but it’s definitely there. This way of going allows us to get the film out without compromise.” 

Announcing a new title alongside the trailer, the film is now called Mowgli: Legend Of The Jungle, and we haven’t got too long to wait before it hits Netflix next month. 

A second Star Wars live-action series is on the way for Disney+, the company’s upcoming streaming service. The series will star Diego Luna, who is reprising his role as Cassian Andor, the Rebel spy from Rogue One.

Set to go into production next year, the new series will follow Cassian during the early days of the Rebellion and before the events of Rogue One (since, you know, he blew up in that movie).

“The rousing spy thriller will explore tales filled with espionage and daring missions to restore hope to a galaxy in the grip of a ruthless Empire,” according to a statement on StarWars.com.

Based on the James Bond-like assassin/spy antics we saw from Cassian in Rogue One, the above description should be very exciting. Like Rogue One itself, a series set in the morally gray world of the Rebellion would be a more modern take on the Galactic Civil War than the black and white storytelling of the Original Trilogy. How dark Disney will go with this series remains to be seen.

“Going back to the Star Wars universe is very special for me,” Luna said. “I have so many memories of the great work we did together and the relationships I made throughout the journey. We have a fantastic adventure ahead of us, and this new exciting format will give us the chance to explore this character more deeply.”

Cassian hasn’t appeared in many other Star Wars stories since his turn in Rogue One. Besides a Marvel comic one-shot, starring both Cassian and his charmingly sarcastic droid, K-2SO, not much of the rebel’s backstory has been explored. This will undoubtedly change with this series.

No showrunner was named in the announcement, but considering Jon Favreau (The Jungle Book) is helming the other live-action series, The Mandalorian, expect a big name behind the director’s chair.

No release has been set for the series, but you can expect Disney+ to launch in late 2019.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for the current episodes of The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead viewers are, by now, accustomed to glaring divergences from its comic book source material, especially in the wake of – amongst many other things – the recent departure of the franchise’s protagonist, Andrew Lincoln’s Rick Grimes. However, one divergence that hasn’t been discussed for some time is the mysterious departure of Corey Hawkins’s Heath, a major player in the comic book series, who saw his long-anticipated television tenure disappointingly cut short. Well, the truth about said departure has, at last, been confirmed. In the very least, it’s intriguing.

Angela Kang, who took over showrunner duties on The Walking Dead this season, confirms the fate of Heath in an interview with Business Insider. The character was last seen two years ago back in season 7, episode 6, ‘Swear.’ Now, according to Kang, it appears that – in a fate resembling Rick Grimes’s recent exit from the series in season 9, episode 5, ‘What Comes After’ – poor Heath was whisked away by then-junkyard group leader Anne/Jadis, offered to the mysterious people in the helicopter, presumably classified as either an ‘A’ or ‘B’ and traded for supplies. – More on this later, since there’s plenty of context to cover.

In the fateful season 7 episode, Heath and Tara (Alanna Masterson) set out in a familiar Alexandria-owned RV on a supply run that went sideways due to some obligatory undead interference, which culminated in Heath taking a tumble off a bridge, presumably swept away by the water underneath, never to be seen again. It’s a rather ignominious – Boba Fett/Sarlacc-esque – fate for a character who experienced quite an extensive arc in the comic book series, in which he is not only still around, but a prominent leader amongst the survivor communities.

The first clue that led to Kang’s revelation about Heath’s survival appeared on the November 4th episode of aftershow Talking Dead, which, in its montage of factoids, revealed that Anne’s RV seen in that night’s TWD episode was, indeed, the same one that Heath and Tara drove on that unlucky season 7 supply run.

The significance here is that the RV mysteriously went missing after the scramble that led to Heath’s disappearance. Thus, one might surmise that a soaking-wet Heath went back to the scene (after Tara left,) to recover the vehicle, only to be abducted by Anne/Jadis’s group, after which he went for an involuntary helicopter ride. Consequently, a major clue about Heath’s fate was stealthily dropped, seemingly confirming a burgeoning fan theory. Thus, as Kang candidly explains of the Heath/helicopter angle:

“That was kind of the intention that we had in the back of our heads this whole time. Even back in that season where you know we had to write the wonderful Corey Hawkins out because he had huge opportunities in the feature film world… those seeds were already set there.”

Of course, the inside baseball explanation for Heath’s disappearance was always the career momentum of his onscreen portrayer, Corey Hawkins. The actor came into the role of Heath in 2015, already riding momentum from his role as Dr. Dre in the Oscar-nominated NWA biopic, Straight Outta Compton; something that, in retrospect, foreshadowed the limited nature of his TWD tenure.

Indeed, while Hawkins never officially departed the show, he did take an extended hiatus to star in Fox franchise sequel series 24: Legacy; an initially-promising effort that was cancelled after one season. However, his career momentum remains, having banked film appearances in franchise-building blockbuster Kong: Skull Island and director Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, with upcoming roles in the Christoph Waltz-directed drama, Georgetown, and Michael Bay actioner 6 Underground.

Auspiciously, the now-revealed nature of Heath’s departure opens the possibility of a return – not on the series, but in the trio of The Walking Dead TV movies that AMC immediately announced upon the airing of Rick’s final episode. After all, the culminating moments of ‘What Comes After’ threw a curveball to fans who thought they’d just witnessed the explosive sacrificial demise of Rick, only to see him get whisked away to a mysterious place by the helicopter in question, with his near-fatal wounds treated. Thus, given the story synergy and prospective flexibility of a TV movie for Hawkins’s schedule, it’s quite conceivable that Rick will reunite with Heath in the mythology-expanding movie(s).

Warning: contains major spoilers for season 1 of Counterpart.

Take the core concept of Sliding Doors, reimagine it as a sci fi-tinged Cold War spy thriller set across parallel worlds, and throw in a mesmerising dual performance from J.K. Simmons. Intrigued by Counterpart yet? The Starz series is one of the most compelling and acclaimed shows of the year so far, and with season two on the horizon, there’s never been a better time to get caught up with the first ten episodes on STARZPLAY. Here’s a primer on the key things to know about Counterpart, aka your next binge-watch.

In the 1980s, a secret scientific experiment based in East Berlin resulted in the accidental creation of a parallel Earth, referred to in the show as the Prime world. Everyone who was alive at the time of the experiment has an “other” in the Prime world; a double created in their image. Crossing between the two worlds is generally prohibited, and the bridge connecting them, The Crossing, is guarded by a UN agency called the Office of Interchange (OI). Relations between the two worlds are tense, largely because of a deadly swine flu epidemic that broke out in the Prime world a decade after its creation, wiping out 7% of the population. A popular conspiracy theory in the Prime world is that the Alpha government deliberately caused the epidemic, and as the show picks up, a rogue terrorist faction named Project Indigo is seeking violent revenge against the Alpha world. Indigo has been cultivating sleeper cells of children in the Prime world, training them from birth to eventually replace – and kill – their Alpha world counterparts.

Howard Silk (Simmons) is a meek, low-level OI employee who, despite his decades of work, is not privy to any real information about the other world or the diplomatic relations between the two. That all changes when his double, a hardened spy, crosses over into the Alpha world to try and thwart Project Indigo’s latest plot. An assassin, codenamed Baldwin (Sara Serraiocco) has been sent across with a lengthy kill list that includes Howard’s wife, Emily (Olivia Williams). In order to buy more time, the two Howards switch identities and pose as one another in their respective worlds, prompting the nature vs nurture question of how different the two men really are.

That’s thrown into sharpest relief by their respective domestic lives. In the Prime world, Howard and Emily have been bitterly separated for years, and Howard has almost no relationship with his daughter Anna (Sarah Bolger). In the Alpha world, Emily is in a coma after a recent car accident (which turns out to have been orchestrated by Indigo), and Anna does not exist. As you can imagine, this all prompts a unique kind of domestic drama after the two Howards swap lives; one of the show’s earliest twists is that Emily Alpha has been in contact with Howard Prime for years, and is the one who encouraged his crossing over.

And that’s not even the most fraught marital dynamic in the show. One of the season’s big mysteries is the identity of a mole leaking information from Alpha OI, and although Howard’s boss Peter Quayle (Harry Llloyd) falls under suspicion, the real culprit is his wife Clare (Nazanin Boniadi). To be more specific, it’s Clare’s Indigo-trained double from the Prime world, who has murdered and replaced the original Clare without Quayle’s knowledge. Much like the two Howards in their new worlds, Clare Prime has been changed by the mask she wears, and she has real feelings both for Quayle and for their baby. Though horrified by the truth, Quayle is persuaded not to turn Clare in for the sake of their family, and in the finale makes a deal with Howard Prime to ensure her safety in exchange for that of Emily Alpha.

The finale features a violent turning point for Howard, who kills Alexander Pope (Stephen Rea) – Howard Prime’s treacherous mentor who is in fact the mastermind behind Indigo – in self-defense. “It’s Darwinian,” Pope tells him prophetically, moments earlier. “If you don’t become him, he will become you.” It’s never been clearer that the Howards are bleeding into each other: the finale ends with Howard Prime sitting by Emily’s hospital bed reading poetry to her, while Howard sits in solitary confinement on the other side, now a killer. One of the underlying questions of the whole show is just how different these two men really are – how will season two develop them, now that Howard Prime’s mission in the Alpha world is theoretically complete, but the crossing between the two worlds is closed?

Another intriguing plot thread from the finale is the relationship between Baldwin, who has been shown as deeply lonely and desperate for connection, and Howard Prime, who successfully persuaded her to walk away from her contract and not kill Emily. He did this by offering her money – enough to try to start a real life – but perhaps also by offering her honesty. Baldwin has a lot of trauma relating to her late father, while Howard Prime is estranged from his daughter, so this could be an intriguing dynamic. Will they continue to interact? And will Baldwin be targeted by Indigo now that she’s walked out on her contract? For that matter, what does Indigo even look like with Pope dead?

There’s also the fact that Quayle, who risked everything in the finale to protect his faux-wife and baby, has no idea that Clare Prime murdered the real Clare (as far as he knows, she’s living a new life on the other side). Will he discover the truth? And even if he doesn’t, how is their “marriage” going to function between his role at OI and her involvement with Indigo?

The finale also sets up a major conflict between the two worlds, triggered by the death of a Prime infiltrator, who escaped capture in the Alpha world and died in the “no man’s land” of the crossing. Prime OI refused to claim the infiltrator as one of their own, despite Emily’s warnings that this would go down very poorly with Alpha OI. And there’s still the lingering question of whether Alpha operatives really are responsible for the flu pandemic that decimated the Prime world. Will season two feature an all-out war of the worlds? The wait for answers won’t be long – Counterpart season two will return to STARZPLAY on December 9th.

Counterpart season 1 is available to stream on STARZPLAY now – start your 7-day free trial here.

Warning: contains major spoilers for season 1 of Counterpart.

Take the core concept of Sliding Doors, reimagine it as a sci fi-tinged Cold War spy thriller set across parallel worlds, and throw in a mesmerising dual performance from J.K. Simmons. Intrigued by Counterpart yet? The Starz series is one of the most compelling and acclaimed shows of the year so far, and with season two on the horizon, there’s never been a better time to get caught up with the first ten episodes on STARZPLAY. Here’s a primer on the key things to know about Counterpart, aka your next binge-watch.

In the 1980s, a secret scientific experiment based in East Berlin resulted in the accidental creation of a parallel Earth, referred to in the show as the Prime world. Everyone who was alive at the time of the experiment has an “other” in the Prime world; a double created in their image. Crossing between the two worlds is generally prohibited, and the bridge connecting them, The Crossing, is guarded by a UN agency called the Office of Interchange (OI). Relations between the two worlds are tense, largely because of a deadly swine flu epidemic that broke out in the Prime world a decade after its creation, wiping out 7% of the population. A popular conspiracy theory in the Prime world is that the Alpha government deliberately caused the epidemic, and as the show picks up, a rogue terrorist faction named Project Indigo is seeking violent revenge against the Alpha world. Indigo has been cultivating sleeper cells of children in the Prime world, training them from birth to eventually replace – and kill – their Alpha world counterparts.

Howard Silk (Simmons) is a meek, low-level OI employee who, despite his decades of work, is not privy to any real information about the other world or the diplomatic relations between the two. That all changes when his double, a hardened spy, crosses over into the Alpha world to try and thwart Project Indigo’s latest plot. An assassin, codenamed Baldwin (Sara Serraiocco) has been sent across with a lengthy kill list that includes Howard’s wife, Emily (Olivia Williams). In order to buy more time, the two Howards switch identities and pose as one another in their respective worlds, prompting the nature vs nurture question of how different the two men really are.

That’s thrown into sharpest relief by their respective domestic lives. In the Prime world, Howard and Emily have been bitterly separated for years, and Howard has almost no relationship with his daughter Anna (Sarah Bolger). In the Alpha world, Emily is in a coma after a recent car accident (which turns out to have been orchestrated by Indigo), and Anna does not exist. As you can imagine, this all prompts a unique kind of domestic drama after the two Howards swap lives; one of the show’s earliest twists is that Emily Alpha has been in contact with Howard Prime for years, and is the one who encouraged his crossing over.

And that’s not even the most fraught marital dynamic in the show. One of the season’s big mysteries is the identity of a mole leaking information from Alpha OI, and although Howard’s boss Peter Quayle (Harry Llloyd) falls under suspicion, the real culprit is his wife Clare (Nazanin Boniadi). To be more specific, it’s Clare’s Indigo-trained double from the Prime world, who has murdered and replaced the original Clare without Quayle’s knowledge. Much like the two Howards in their new worlds, Clare Prime has been changed by the mask she wears, and she has real feelings both for Quayle and for their baby. Though horrified by the truth, Quayle is persuaded not to turn Clare in for the sake of their family, and in the finale makes a deal with Howard Prime to ensure her safety in exchange for that of Emily Alpha.

The finale features a violent turning point for Howard, who kills Alexander Pope (Stephen Rea) – Howard Prime’s treacherous mentor who is in fact the mastermind behind Indigo – in self-defense. “It’s Darwinian,” Pope tells him prophetically, moments earlier. “If you don’t become him, he will become you.” It’s never been clearer that the Howards are bleeding into each other: the finale ends with Howard Prime sitting by Emily’s hospital bed reading poetry to her, while Howard sits in solitary confinement on the other side, now a killer. One of the underlying questions of the whole show is just how different these two men really are – how will season two develop them, now that Howard Prime’s mission in the Alpha world is theoretically complete, but the crossing between the two worlds is closed?

Another intriguing plot thread from the finale is the relationship between Baldwin, who has been shown as deeply lonely and desperate for connection, and Howard Prime, who successfully persuaded her to walk away from her contract and not kill Emily. He did this by offering her money – enough to try to start a real life – but perhaps also by offering her honesty. Baldwin has a lot of trauma relating to her late father, while Howard Prime is estranged from his daughter, so this could be an intriguing dynamic. Will they continue to interact? And will Baldwin be targeted by Indigo now that she’s walked out on her contract? For that matter, what does Indigo even look like with Pope dead?

There’s also the fact that Quayle, who risked everything in the finale to protect his faux-wife and baby, has no idea that Clare Prime murdered the real Clare (as far as he knows, she’s living a new life on the other side). Will he discover the truth? And even if he doesn’t, how is their “marriage” going to function between his role at OI and her involvement with Indigo?

The finale also sets up a major conflict between the two worlds, triggered by the death of a Prime infiltrator, who escaped capture in the Alpha world and died in the “no man’s land” of the crossing. Prime OI refused to claim the infiltrator as one of their own, despite Emily’s warnings that this would go down very poorly with Alpha OI. And there’s still the lingering question of whether Alpha operatives really are responsible for the flu pandemic that decimated the Prime world. Will season two feature an all-out war of the worlds? The wait for answers won’t be long – Counterpart season two will return to STARZPLAY on December 9th.

Counterpart season 1 is available to stream on STARZPLAY now – start your 7-day free trial here.