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Ondřej Hrdina(SeaPRwire) -   It has been confirmed that a TV adaptation of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, created and initially self-published by author Matt Dinniman, is currently in development at Peacock. Chris Yost, known for his work on The Mandalorian and Thor: Ragnarok, is set to write the series. Executive producers will include Yost, Seth MacFarlane, and Dinniman. MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door production company, the force behind comedies like Ted and The Orville, is involved. Given the show's heavy reliance on referential humor and metatextual deconstruction, this creative team appears to be an ideal match.However, the true significance of this adaptation extends beyond merely bringing a popular fantasy series to television; it represents a major victory for an entire RPG genre entering the mainstream spotlight.RPGs have long been a favorite gaming style, dating back to the early days of tabletop gaming, largely because they allow players to fully immerse themselves in characters they build from scratch. Whether through physical games like Dungeons and Dragons and Call of Cthulhu or the massive success of video games like The Elder Scrolls and Baldur’s Gate, the concept of assuming a new identity and exploring a grand adventure through fresh eyes holds an enduring appeal.Leveraging the popularity of traditional RPGs, a new narrative form known as LitRPG has emerged, blending the genre's mechanical rules with the experience of reading a novel. Unlike choose-your-own-adventure books, which offer reader control within a "real" story world, LitRPGs plunge both the reader and the protagonist into a literal RPG environment—similar to the isekai subgenre—where progression involves leveling up and managing stats like intelligence and strength. While this genre has grown in popularity over the last decade, Dungeon Crawler Carl stands out as its most mainstream iteration to date.The Dungeon Crawler Carl series has definitely become the biggest example of the nascent LitRPG genre. | Ace BooksSpanning seven novels, the story is set in the World Dungeon, an 18-level dungeon constructed from the debris of Earth. The protagonist, Carl, a former U.S. Coast Guard member, is compelled to enter this dungeon alongside his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Donut, and other survivors. They are forced into this scenario by the Borant Corporation, an alien entity that destroyed Earth to harvest its resources. The corporation turns the survivors' struggle into an intergalactic game show called Dungeon Crawler World. In this contest, "crawlers" battle foes and bosses to gain experience and receive gear from viewer-sponsored "loot boxes," all while attempting to clear the dungeon's final level.While narratives involving "death games"—where characters face fatal consequences in what seems like a game—are not new, the current cultural landscape, following The Hunger Games and Ready or Not, makes this the perfect time to adapt Dungeon Crawler Carl. Fundamentally, the story explores the gamification of the apocalypse for entertainment value. This theme, common in the death game genre, resonates with a frightening relevance to today's political climate.Author Matt Dinniman | Phillip Faraone/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty ImagesAdditionally, video game adaptations are currently enjoying unprecedented popularity, with recent hits like The Super Mario Bros. Movie and the Fallout TV series. It is reasonable to expect that this success could extend to a show centered on video games, particularly one that examines RPG wish-fulfillment through such surreal humor and profound existential depth.Given that LitRPG is a relatively new trend in publishing, the form of the Dungeon Crawler Carl adaptation will be intriguing to watch. The show aims to capture the essence of a book that mimics the experience of playing an RPG—a complex concept in itself. If executed successfully, it has the potential to become one of the most distinctive science fiction series on television.A release date for the Dungeon Crawler Carl series has not yet been announced. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

Dark Star Pictures(SeaPRwire) -   Last month, it was confirmed that Chloé Zhao’s planned reboot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer would not be moving forward at Hulu, leaving heartbroken fans who had long hoped for a return to Sunnydale. But there is no need to grieve, Scoobies: the spirit of YA-infused supernatural horror-romance lives on in The Serpent’s Skin.Now 21 years old and releasing her sixth feature film, Australian writer-director Alice Maio Mackay specializes in DIY independent projects that take familiar genre frameworks and rework them through her own personal experiences, as well as those of the queer community around her. Mackay’s films have grown up alongside their creator, gradually gaining the confidence to step beyond campy storytelling into something far more heartfelt. The Serpent’s Skin is this tipping point. The visual effects and makeup still clearly mark this as a low-budget production, but in a charmingly retro way that calls back to supernatural teen TV shows from the turn of the millennium — Charmed, for example, or of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The full story is self-contained, but keeps the episodic pacing of a television series, introducing its lead characters and building their relationships before introducing a supernatural threat roughly halfway through the film — in this case, a cursed tattoo that transforms the film’s attractive male lead into a snakelike succubus. Even the supernatural makeup bears a resemblance to work seen in Buffy. | Dark Star PicturesIn truth, this is really more of a side subplot. The core heart of The Serpent’s Skin is the romance between Anna (Alexandra McVicker), a soft-spoken young trans woman who just escaped her restrictive small town to live with her older sister (Charlotte Chimes), and Gen (Avalon Fast), a tattoo artist and witch who traveled across the world to find the woman she saw in her dreams. Anna is that woman, and the attraction between her and Gen is immediate and strong. The chemistry between McVicker and Fast is tender, and they make a believable pair as they fall into a soul-baring relationship that grows even more intense through their shared exploration of their psychic abilities, which grow more powerful when they are together. The intimacy Anna shares with Gen — who acts alternately as a lover, teacher, mentor, and best friend to the fledgling witch — is heady and romantic. The film’s connection between queerness and magic is also deeply affirming: Early on, Gen tells Anna that her ability to “pop” into the minds of others is “a defense you’ve built up [that’s] almost automatic,” turning the thick skin Anna developed into a superpower. Before shifting into monster-of-the-week mode in its second half, The Serpent’s Skin plays like an ethereal Sapphic take on Scanners, with colored lighting that calls to mind another Buffy-inspired work by transfeminine filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun, I Saw the TV Glow. This should come as no surprise; the trans film community is quite small, particularly in the genre space. And while Schoenbrun wasn’t directly involved in The Serpent’s Skin, two other prominent trans filmmakers did contribute — The People’s Joker director Vera Drew, who edited the film; and Castration Movie maestro Louise Weard, who produced it — were on board. Drew’s editing is a particular standout, adding psychedelic touches to the film that greatly boost its dreamlike atmosphere.This queer updated take on the genre procedural will appeal to fans of I Saw the TV Glow. | Dark Star Pictures In the end, however, The Serpent’s Skin is Mackay’s vision, and her onscreen stand-in McVicker carries it with reserved, watchful grace. This is a fantasy — of belonging, of strength found through softness, of being able to protect the people you love from everything violent and hateful in this world — but it is rooted in lived experience that makes it feel grounded and authentic. Being queer in today’s world can be scary, but it can also be transcendent and beautiful. All of that is reflected here — the emo f*ckboy demon with the serpent fangs is just a fun added bonus. The Serpent’s Skin is currently playing in select theaters in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, and will expand to Alamo Drafthouses across the U.S. on April 10. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

Netflix(SeaPRwire) -   What makes Beef stand out is that it never hesitates to cross lines and lean into transgressive themes. As Netflix’s top revenge thriller, it follows a cast of characters who give in to their very worst impulses: in the first season, a simple road rage incident blew up into a catastrophe of massive proportions. By moving this style of conflict to a quiet country club setting, the second season might seem more low-key on the surface — but in reality, Beef is going bigger, broader, and much sexier for Season 2. Instead of following two vastly different drivers (and their put-upon families) through increasingly hostile acts of sabotage, director Jake Schreier and creator/writer Lee Sung Jin have adjusted Beef’s scope to center on three disgruntled couples, and the angry tangled web that connects all of them. Questions of class and power will remain a core focus, just as they were in Season 1. But as the show’s latest trailer shows, Season 2 is also a lot more sexually charged than its predecessor, turning the whole conflict into a psychosexual game of chess.Netflix’s new promotional spot is keeping most details close to the chest, holding back the majority of plot points beyond what has already been revealed. The titular feud kicks off when newly engaged employees Ashley (Cailee Spaeny) and Austin (Charles Melton), who work at a local country club, stumble on their boss Josh (Oscar Isaac) in an all-out brawl with his wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan). But the pair get caught snapping a photo of the fight at its most heated... and that is when the power games begin.Even so, the latest trailer digs deeper into the simmering frustrations that ignite their feud. Across a rapid stream of out-of-context shots, Lindsay admits that her outwardly happy marriage feels more like “a temporary band-aid” than a real partnership. While she and Josh are bound together by the “immense pain” of picking the wrong life partner, Ashley and Austin are still enjoying a prolonged honeymoon phase. That all changes, of course, after the inciting incident, which opens the floodgates for all sorts of temptation and infidelity. Lindsay is caught staring longingly at Woosh (K-pop star BM), the son of Chairwoman Park, portrayed by Youn Yuh-jung. (Park’s ongoing conflicts with her second husband, played by Parasite’s Song Kang-ho, make up the third side of this unhappy tangled triangle.) Austin, meanwhile, guides a client (Seoyeon Jang) through a very sensual stretching session. And there is plenty more layered into the story: Lee named erotic thrillers like The Handmaiden, and domestic dramas including Revolutionary Road and Phantom Thread, as inspirations for this season of Beef. How all of these influences will mix with Lee’s other creative references — like Burn After Reading and The Informant! — only makes anticipation for Season 2 that much higher.Beef Season 2 arrives on Netflix on April 16. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

Lucasfilm(SeaPRwire) -   Since the debut of The Mandalorian in 2019, Star Wars animated shows have consistently been at a disadvantage. Live-action series such as Andor have earned Emmy Award nominations, whereas animated entries like The Bad Batch or anthologies including Visions, Tales of the Jedi, and Tales of the Empire are frequently overlooked by audiences who don't view them as essential to the overarching story. The newest Star Wars animated series now faces the same risk of being ignored, but a significant announcement from Lucasfilm has suddenly elevated its importance within the broader Star Wars chronology. Maul: Shadow Lord is already renewed for a second season, despite the fact it won’t premiere on Disney+ for a few more days. | LucasfilmThe premiere of Maul: Shadow Lord is just days away. The animated series tracks Maul (Sam Witwer) as he ascends to power as a crime lord in the Imperial Era. Remarkably, before viewers have had a chance to witness his double-bladed lightsaber cause chaos again, it has been revealed that Maul: Shadow Lord is confirmed for a second season. This makes it the first Star Wars series to receive a Season 2 renewal ahead of its premiere. This early renewal is a major vote of confidence for the show, indicating that Lucasfilm has such strong faith in it that audience reaction is not a primary concern—the existing excitement demonstrates a clear demand for a series centered on Maul. The character is not the only attraction, however, as the series will also include fearsome Inquisitors like Marrok, who first appeared in the live-action series Ahsoka, which is also preparing for its own second season. Maybe he serves as a good luck charm. Maul was previously a recurring character on previous Star Wars animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels. | LucasfilmThis news also invites speculation about the narrative of Maul: Shadow Lord. Typically, when Disney renews a series this far in advance, it suggests a significant cliffhanger is planned, similar to how the conclusion of Loki Season 1, which revealed the collapse of the known timeline, was followed by a Season 2 announcement. What kind of dramatic ending could justify a renewal before a single episode has been broadcast? This has the potential to be a landmark Star Wars story. Maul: Shadow Lord will release new episodes weekly, leading up to May 4, known as Star Wars Day, making it the perfect occasion for a major revelation. What was once viewed as a simple spinoff to fill the programming schedule now possesses the potential to permanently alter the Star Wars universe. At a minimum, it should alleviate the persistent concern that it would become just another one-season Disney+ series. Maul: Shadow Lord premieres April 6, 2026, on Disney+. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

CJ ENM(SeaPRwire) -   One thing you can always count on Bong Joon-ho to do is work. Even when the Oscar-winning filmmaker seems to be on hiatus or taking a break, Director Bong always devotes some part of himself to his passion for film. This love of film often shapes his daily routine — as he shared during a 2017 masterclass, his day typically starts with watching a movie. And as his latest career shift shows, this sometimes means he works on multiple films at the same time.There was a six-year gap between the Academy Award-sweeping Parasite and Bong’s latest English-language film Mickey 17, but the director did not spend that time idling. Starting in 2019, Bong has been quietly developing an animated feature alongside screenwriter Jason Yu (director of the 2023 psychological thriller Sleep) and his long-time producing partner Seo Woo-sik. V8 Pistons Pictures has revealed a first look at the upcoming project, which will see Bong returning to the anti-industrialist themes he is best known for.Bong Joon-ho has been developing this animated film for the past seven years. | Stephane Cardinale - Corbis/Corbis Entertainment/Getty ImagesAlly does not look or sound like a typical Bong Joon-ho project at first glance, but audiences can expect the director to find plenty of ways to surprise us. The film follows the journey of Ally, a “curious and endearing” piglet squid (a real existing deep-sea creature) who dreams of escaping the uncharted depths of the South Pacific to finally see the sun and become the star of her own wildlife documentary. Her quiet, peaceful life changes overnight when a mysterious aircraft crashes nearby — but the incident also gives Ally the push she needs to set off on her journey to the surface, alongside a group of colorful companions.According to the film’s official synopsis, Ally “explores themes of friendship and courage as encounters between humans and deep-sea creatures reshape both worlds.” It is billed as a family adventure that puts a focus on humor and emotion, and its similarities to beloved films like The Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo are impossible to ignore.That being said, Bong is widely known for portraying the harsh realities of our world, and examining how industrialism, wartime, and capitalism oppress every corner of the globe. From Okja to Snowpiercer and Mickey 17, his work never shies away from showing how the working class (and vulnerable animals) are exploited by the endlessly turning system. Could Ally feature a similarly bleak sociopolitical theme? The new animated film — which looks very warm and Pixar-like in its first revealed image — will almost certainly not be quite as dark as Bong’s most famous works, but it is safe to expect the director to strike a balance for his first animated feature.Ally is scheduled to premiere in theaters in 2027. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

Universal Pictures(SeaPRwire) -   Though it has received a number of middling reviews, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie debuted with $34 million in ticket sales and shows no indication of slowing its box office domination. Nintendo’s growing film franchise is already a huge hit, and based on plot points set up in this latest sequel, it is clear the plumber brothers will be back on the big screen before long (possibly alongside new allies pulled from the wider Nintendo multiverse).While it draws primarily from the 2007 Wii title Super Mario Galaxy , this new sequel pulls inspiration from several other games, including Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Sunshine. The end product feels less like a straightforward adaptation of the beloved game and more like a collage of assorted influences and Easter eggs, which has its fun moments but fails to live up to the tight, cohesive experience of playing the game the film is named after. The flaws of this creative approach are most obvious in how the film handles Princess Rosalina, whose characterization is drastically altered from her in-game version, almost entirely for the worse.Even Brie Larson’s performance cannot save Rosalina from her underdeveloped writing. | Universal PicturesIn Super Mario Galaxy, Princess Rosalina is depicted as a mighty guardian of the cosmos, acting both as a maternal figure to the Lumas (childlike star creatures that assist Mario across the course of the game) and the leader of the Comet Observatory, the huge spacecraft that functions as the game’s central hub. When the game opens, Princess Peach is abducted by Bowser yet again, but Rosalina steps in to aid Mario this time around; her Lumas offer assorted forms of support, and in exchange for Mario collecting Power Stars, Rosalina agrees to transport him to Bowser’s recently created galaxy for their final showdown. Though she is not a playable character, Rosalina is a critical part of the Super Mario Galaxy gameplay experience, and her role forms a core cornerstone of the title.But while the film’s iteration of Princess Rosalina (voiced by Brie Larson) remains the cosmic guardian and maternal figure to the Lumas, her role is switched with Peach’s. Rather than offering support to Mario, she is reduced to a flat, generic damsel in distress who spends most of the runtime held captive by Bowser Jr. She gets very little screen time, and none of the regal authority or strength she displays in the game comes through on screen. She uses her magic briefly to minimal effect, but the majority of her scenes show her locked in a cell that drains her power. The Lumas’ role alongside her is also greatly minimized.Rosalina is a warm, recurring core presence in 2007’s Super Mario Galaxy. | NintendoNaturally, the most significant alteration is the plot twist that Rosalina and Princess Peach are sisters, separated when they were young during an attack by an unidentified foe. While fans have long speculated that Peach and Rosalina are related (this was Nintendo’s initial concept during the early development stages of Super Mario Galaxy), no such connection exists in official game canon. Rosalina’s established backstory in the games explains that as a small child, she built a close bond with the Lumas after their original mother vanished, a dynamic that mirrors Rosalina’s own experience of losing her mother. This twist is not inherently bad on its face, and could have been written to highlight the grief over lost family that defines Rosalina’s character, but she is given so little to do in the film that the reveal lacks the emotional weight of the game’s iconic storybook backstory.Given that Rosalina has become a core staple of the Mario franchise ever since her debut in Galaxy, it is reasonable to expect she will appear again in upcoming installments of the film series. Ideally, the creative team will give her character far more depth and nuance then, as her backstory carries unexpected emotional resonance for a franchise that has never prioritized complex storytelling in the past. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

Warner Bros.(SeaPRwire) -   Horror has been in a renaissance for years, but 2025 felt like the moment the floodgates of bloody, creative content truly swung open. Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Zach Cregger’s Weapons each showed what’s possible when an auteur’s vision meets a solid budget—though their approaches couldn’t have been more different: Sinners turned the vampire invasion genre into a lush period piece filled with musical sequences and racial commentary, while Weapons leaned heavily into supernatural horror using a structure evocative of Magnolia. Both films were big hits at the Academy Awards, with Weapons’ Amy Madigan taking home a surprise Best Supporting Actress award for her role as the wig-wearing, child-manipulating Aunt Gladys.Now, Aunt Gladys is moving from villain to main character in Cregger’s new prequel, and we already have a (working) title for the upcoming project.Krampus and Godzilla: King of the Monsters writer Zach Shields is co-writing the Aunt Gladys prequel movie with Cregger. | NINA PROMMER/EPA-EFE/ShutterstockAccording to Variety, Zach Cregger and Krampus screenwriter Zach Shields will collaborate on a project currently titled—fittingly—Gladys. The prequel is said to be based on an origin story from an early draft of Weapons that would have revealed how Aunt Gladys got her powers, before it was cut from the final film.The title might seem obvious, but it gives us a hint of what’s to come. Since it’s not called Aunt Gladys, it will probably be set when she was a young woman, before she became an aunt. Given that Gladys has had her powers for decades, the prequel is likely a period piece. But which era? Our biggest clue is her style: gaudy tracksuits, shirts with large brooches, and even bigger collars suggest she came of age in the 1980s and hasn’t updated her wardrobe since.This is a woman with strong opinions on Duran Duran. | Warner Bros.Shields joining as a writer could also signal something about Gladys. While Weapons was an atmospheric, modern horror mystery, Shields’ past work on Krampus implies the prequel will take a more folk-horror tone—perfect for a story about a woman learning to control minds by breaking a stick over a bowl of water. The mystery Gladys will solve is where and when these powers originated, and no matter how much we guess, there are sure to be more surprises ahead.Weapons is streaming on HBO Max. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

Amazon MGM(SeaPRwire) -   When Ryland Grace arrives at Tau Ceti in Project Hail Mary, roughly four years have passed for his human body and mind. But, due to the effects of time dilation, between 12 and 14 years have gone by on Earth. And this is only the opening of the story. By the end of Project Hail Mary, decades have elapsed on Earth, but Grace has barely aged at all. In the book, he states he is 54 years old, even though 71 full years have passed on Earth since his birth. In both the book and the film adaptation, Grace is younger than he should be when you account for how much time has gone by for people on Earth.For those who have not read Andy Weir’s original novel, the book includes far more mathematical and science-focused explanations of Grace’s journey than the movie reveals. As Grace says at the end of the book: “I’ve done a lot of time-dilated travel.” This refers to travel that occurs under extremely high gravity, or near the speed of light, which makes time pass comparatively slower for the traveler. That brings up key questions: does the math actually add up in Project Hail Mary? How does all of this physics work? And does Rocky really not understand anything about relativity?Inverse reached out to Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, author of A Brief History of Black Holes, and a popular science YouTuber, to answer all your pressing questions about the time differences in Project Hail Mary and how physics explains the whole concept.Why Time Doesn’t Move at the Same Rate Everywhere One of the core principles of Project Hail Mary relies on the Lorentz transformation, a mathematical tool that calculates time differences when an object is approaching the speed of light. As Smethurst explained to Ryan Gosling in one of her interviews, the simplest way to understand the movie’s take on time dilation is that “space and time are relative, and it depends on how fast you’re traveling.” The closer you travel to the speed of light, the slower time moves for you. But for those moving at far slower speeds — like, for example, the 67,000 mph (0.00999104 percent of the speed of light) that Earth travels around the sun — time ticks away at a much faster rate.Even with thousands of YouTube pop science explanations of this relativity concept available at our fingertips, the idea still confounds most people. In the first Back to the Future film, Doc Brown hitting 88 miles-per-hour let characters travel to the past, but in real life, the faster you move, the more likely you are to end up in “the future,” because time moves slower for you. Atomic clocks placed in orbit have already proven this phenomenon is real, and GPS systems would not work at all without it.Even so, most of our brains are inherently wired not to accept that increasing velocity close to the speed of light can change how we experience the passage of time. In the novel, Weir highlights this common intuition by writing that Rocky and all Erdians “don’t know about relativistic physics.” In the book, Rocky even goes as far as to say, “of course, time is same. Time is same everywhere.”Rocky’s point of view is actually very common, even in interstellar sci-fi stories like Star Trek, whose Stardate system relies on flawed science, even when it includes basic background explanations of relativity. When asked about this trope, Dr. Smethurst confirms that the opposite is true in real life. “I think it's interesting to think about how that [sci-fi lightspeed tropes] gets into people's psyches,” Smethurst tells Inverse. “Because even in the search for alien life, people don't realize how much that comes down to timing.”So, while Rocky and Grace got lucky to meet at exactly the right time, Smethurst also points out that Project Hail Mary reaches this plot point without cutting too many corners on space science.Obviously, the near-limitless energy potential of astrophage as a fuel source is fiction, but if we accept that the astrophage-powered spin drive on the Hail Mary can constantly accelerate, approaching 94 percent of the speed of light, then, Smethurst confirms, all of this makes sense within the bounds of speculative science. “The timelines for the book, in terms of what actually happens, and the fact that in terms of the relative ages of Ryland and Stratt, come the end of the book, fully checks out,” Smethurst says.Ryland Grace experiences roughly four years of travel time to reach Tau Ceti, while about a decade and a half passes on Earth. Weir arrived at these numbers using the Lorentz transformation, but also had to dive deep into how the equation’s constants changed because of the Hail Mary’s constant acceleration. If the ship had traveled at a fixed constant speed, the time dilation equation would have been much simpler for a sci-fi story. But to make the story as realistic as possible, Weir also made the math far more complicated.“It's really a kudos to Andy in doing those full calculations and not just rough back-of-the-envelope math,” Smethurst explains. “He could have just assumed Grace traveled at a fixed speed the entire time, when in reality, we know he’s not ... If you're accelerating, your speed is constantly changing, which means the duration of your experience is constantly changing. All of a sudden, it's not a nice, simple equation; it's a lot of calculus.”Could a Spacefaring Alien Really Not Understand Relativity? Although this plot point is not explored in detail in the film, in the book, the Erdians’ lack of any concept of relativity is a major story beat that explains much of Rocky’s backstory. But how realistic is this idea? How could a spacefaring species build an advanced spaceship and harness the power of astrophage without knowing how gravity and speed impact time?Smethurst tells Inverse that this kind of knowledge gap is actually fairly easy to imagine, because technical know-how is not the same thing as fundamental scientific discovery.“We sent people to the Moon before we understood that black holes existed,” Smethurst points out. “On Earth, science has almost always outpaced engineering, whereas on Rocky's planet, engineering has outpaced science. For the 1969 Moon landings, we already had the science of thrust worked out. What we didn’t have were powerful enough computers. So science outpaced engineering here on Earth, whereas on Rocky's planet, it's the opposite way around.”So, although Rocky himself probably does not exist on the real planet Erid, this kind of mismatch between science and technology could absolutely happen in reality. And, if you’re watching Project Hail Mary, and you start wondering if Rocky and Grace really are as skilled at math, engineering, and science as they seem to be, the answer is yes. But of course, it’s all relative.Project Hail Mary is in theaters now.A Brief History of Black HolesAmazon - This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.

Peacock(SeaPRwire) -   “Does anyone actually know who their neighbors are?” It’s the question that fuels countless paranoid suburban tales — none explore this theme better than The ’Burbs, the self-aware follow-up to the late 1980s comedy starring Tom Hanks. The Peacock original series comes from Celeste Hughey, who has long showcased her fascination for the hidden secrets and quiet suspicion lingering on quiet cul-de-sacs through past hits like Dead to Me and Palm Royale.“At the end of the day, everyone just wants to be in everyone else’s business,” Hughey tells Inverse at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival.This is an age-old question, one that has existed ever since neighborhoods were first created. “And still, we all can’t help peeking out our windows to see what’s going on,” Hughey adds.Hughey’s reboot was partially inspired by the boredom, obsession, and mania that swept the whole world during COVID lockdown. “I moved to a really quiet cul-de-sac, and every time I heard a branch crack or spotted a car parked for too long, I immediately thought, ‘There’s a murderer hiding here,” she continues. “There’s always drama unfolding behind every front door. You never truly know who your neighbor is. One of my neighbors even shot another neighbor in the leg for trespassing on his property.”Whether tensions rise to the same extreme in The ’Burbs remains a closely guarded mystery — but it’s exactly this intrigue that made the series one of Peacock’s most talked-about new releases upon its debut. This dark comedy takes the core question and tries to answer it with a delightfully paranoid twist. Keke Palmer stars as Samira, a new mother with deep reservations about her new neighborhood. She joins her British partner Rob (Jack Whitehall) at his childhood home, and the pair have barely dropped their bags before they’re confronted with a minefield of microaggressions from the surrounding neighbors. It’s a smart, thoughtful update for stories created in a post-Get Out world, and one drawn directly from Hughey’s own lived experience.“It was really important to me to always make sure that Keke’s Black identity was front and center in the show,” Hughey explains. “That comes through in everything: her costumes, the music she listens to, the art on her walls, even her Howard sweatshirt. She never hides who she is, even with a white husband in a majority-white suburb.”Samira is fortunate to quickly build a support system among her quirky neighbors, from Rob’s high school pal — and the only other non-white resident of Hinkley Hills — Naveen (Kapil Talwalkar), to the well-meaning, wine-loving Lynn (Julia Duffy). They fill her in on all the gossip about the (obviously haunted) house directly across the street from Samira and Rob’s cozy Colonial home, and they stand by her when the house’s new resident, Gary (Justin Kirk), calls the police on her for “loitering” on his property. His arrival dredges up 20 years’ worth of hidden secrets surrounding his run-down Victorian, including the murder of one of Rob’s former classmates. Hughey updates The ’Burbs with her lived experience — and the story is far stronger for it. | PeacockFrom here, a tangled conspiracy unfolds where it’s impossible to know who to trust, shaped just as much by its diverse cast as it is by the quirky charm of the original film. This isn’t the first reboot of an ‘80s cult classic that Hughey has spearheaded, but she hopes The ’Burbs won’t follow in the footsteps of her last short-lived series, High Fidelity, which was canceled after just one season on Hulu. Given how hungry audiences are for diverse, authentic stories, Hughey feels far more optimistic about the future of this project.“I really hope that the industry listens to what audiences want,” Hughey says. “People love to not only see themselves reflected on screen, but see the world around them reflected accurately, and also experience worlds that are different from their own.”No matter how different audience members are from one another, chaotic unpredictable neighbors will always be something that unites us all in shared paranoia.The ’Burbs is now streaming on Peacock. This article is provided by a third-party content provider. SeaPRwire (https://www.seaprwire.com/) makes no warranties or representations regarding its content. Category: Top News, Daily News SeaPRwire provides global press release distribution services for companies and organizations, covering more than 6,500 media outlets, 86,000 editors and journalists, and over 3.5 million end-user desktop and mobile apps. SeaPRwire supports multilingual press release distribution in English, Japanese, German, Korean, French, Russian, Indonesian, Malay, Vietnamese, Chinese, and more.