WIRE Buzz: Brave New World hitting Peacock at launch; Star Wars prequel manga; more

One of many upcoming streamers hoping to become a major player in the digital media landscape, NBCUniversal’s Peacock is nearing its launch. While Peacock’s major draw will initially be its massive backlog of TV and film content (everything from Battlestar Galactica to The Mummy franchise), it’s also planning plenty of originals — and it’s finally been announced what Peacock will be putting front-and-center when it goes live.

According to a release, the service will launch with one original genre film and four original genre shows — only one of the latter being aimed toward adults. Psych 2: Lassie Come Home (AKA Psych: The Movie 2) is the cinematic treat given to subscribers while those more interested in a series can look forward to Brave New World, Cleopatra in Space, Curious George, and Where's Waldo?.

Curious George and Where's Waldo? are famous kid-angled properties while Cleopatra in Space has a wild plot in which the Egyptian ruler is thrust 30,000 years into the future, where she must attend some kind of supersoldier high school. Really. But the main draw for many will be the Alden Ehrenreich-led adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The dystopian thriller set in New London looks to shake up how fans look to the future, with Ehrenreich’s John the Savage doing much of the shaking.

Check out a handful of new photos from the show below:

Peacock launches on July 15.

(Peacock and SYFY WIRE are both owned by NBCUniversal.)

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Next, Yen Press is dropping a pair of prologue Star Wars stories in an unexpected format. Star Wars Leia, Princess of Alderaan and Star Wars Rebels will both take place before the events of A New Hope and are coming to fans in manga form.

The former — by writer Claudia Gray and artist Haruichi Furudate — adapts Gray's YA Star Wars novel Leia, Princess of Alderaan while the latter — by writer/artist Akira Aoki — tackles the hit animated show of the same name. Check out the covers below:

The ongoing series will be available in both print and digital this fall.

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Finally, the Blumhouse favorite behind Black Christmas and Into the Dark has scored her next project. Director Sophia Takal is heading to Netflix.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Takal has signed on for the sci-fi thriller Where I End for the streamer, which tells the Upload-esque story of a future where consciousness can be saved and uploaded to a computer. The only problem here is that if you murder someone, your victim could come back looking for revenge. That’s what happens in Where I End as a husband returns to see if his wife had something to do with his killing.

Imran Zaidi (The Fellowship for Alien Detection) wrote the screenplay, which topped the 2017 Black List of unproduced scripts.