WIRE Buzz: 'Shadow in the Cloud' battles gremlins, Creepshow unwraps Holiday Special footage, and more

Richard Matheson, author of the short story "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," would probably be proud of the first trailer for Shadow in the Cloud.

Playing on World War II-era stories about strange creatures that liked to wreck airplanes, the feature is a genre-bending war flick in the vein of Overlord and Ghosts of War. Chloë Grace Moretz stars as Captain Maude Garrett, the only female soldier aboard a B-17 bomber crewed by men. She's been tasked with transporting a secret package, but that mission takes a backseat when a bona fide gremlin tries to bring the plane out of the sky. Clocking in at just 83 minutes long, Shadow seems like it'll be a taught thrill ride that doesn't overstay its welcome.

Check out the trailer:

The movie is directed by Roseanne Liang (My Wedding and Other Secrets), who shares script credit with Max Landis (Bright). Nick Robinson, Beulah Koale, Taylor John Smith, Callan Mulvey, Benedict Wall, Joe Witkowski, and Byron Coll make up the rest of the cast.

Vertical Entertainment will release Shadow in the Cloud in theaters and on VOD Jan. 1, 2021.

Season 2 of Creepshow is still a ways away, but the recently rebooted horror anthology won't let the Christmas season pass by without a story of the macabre.

In the hour-long Creepshow Holiday Special, Adam Pally (The Mindy Project) plays a man who realizes that he is a werewolf. Wanting to get his transformations under control, he attends a "Shapeshifters Anonymous" where he meets a self-proclaimed "Were-cheetah," played by Anna Camp (Pitch Perfect). Other members have the ability to turn into boars and tortoises. As if that wasn't weird enough, the support group finds itself under siege by Santa Claus and his "many evil helpers."

Based on a short story by J.A. Konrath, the special episode was written and directed by Creepshow head honcho Greg Nicotero.

Just remember: "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their beards!"

Watch the wacky trailer:

Here's the key art:

Credit: Shudder

A Creepshow Holiday Special lands on the rooftop of Shudder next Friday, Dec. 18.

Earlier today, a verified Netflix Twitter account confirmed that an animated Sonic the Hedgehog TV series would premiere on the platform in 2022.

Per the tweet, the show was a collaboration between SEGA, WildBrain, and Ben 10 creators Man of Action. Then, without warning, the company took down the tweet with such speed, that you'd think Sonic was running that particular account. It's unclear why the post was deleted, but we'd wager that it was a simple mistake of premature upload (we swear, this never happens!).

Luckily, SYFY WIRE's own Trent Moore captured a screenshot of the tweet before it was taken down.

The blue and sneaker-wearing speedster entered the world of live-action earlier this year with Jeff Fowler's Sonic the Hedgehog movie. Breaking free of the video game adaptation curse, the film was a hit with critics and audiences alike. Across the board, Jim Carrey was the standout as the evil Dr. Robotnik. While it only ran for about a month in theaters before everything shut down over COVID-19, Sonic was one of the last pre-pandemic box office successes with $320 million globally. Paramount has already green-lit a sequel, with Fowler returning to direct. Thanks to a small teaser at the end of the first installment, we know that Tails the Fox will play a major role in the follow-up.