WIRE Buzz: Castle Rock returns in S2 trailer; Atari finds retro gaming service; more

Season two of Castle Rock, the Hulu deep dive into the Stephen King universe, is all about Misery. And Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan), the driving force behind it. Now fans have another trailer welcoming them back to the ambiguous and spooky Maine town, readying them for the first three episodes, which will soon drop on the streaming service.

Take a look:

Caplan’s straight-up Kathy Bates impression will be bolstered by a cast including Tim Robbins, Paul Sparks, Yusra Warsama, Barkhad Abdi, Elsie Fisher, and Matthew Alan over the course of the season’s 10 episodes. Things are looking witchy: Blair Witchy. And stuffed with references, of course.

According to a release, Castle Rock will give fans a sneak peek through Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter on Oct. 2, taking fans on a 13-minute drive to Jerusalem’s Lot—with plenty of easter eggs along the way. Fans can go back to Castle Rock (even though, why would you?) when it returns on Oct. 23.

Next, the Atari VCS is dropping a ton of Atari games thanks to a new partnership with Antstream Arcade. According to a release, the upcoming retro game console will link up with its own version of the streaming service in order to play “the largest collection of Atari games available on demand” in addition to Antstream’s original content.

The Antstream Arcade app will launch with the console, offers a 30-day free trial, and costs either $9.99/month or $7.99/month when ordered for a year. With 50 Atari games (like Yars’ Revenge and Pong) available at launch, the service will add more steadily over the course of the relationship.

The Atari VCS is available for preorder now and is aiming for a March 2020 release.

Finally, a pair of sci-fi series have found a writer thanks to a company’s overall deal. According to Deadline, prolific (and somewhat infamous) screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (The Dark Tower, Winter's Tale) has signed with MGM Television. 

That means the writer will write/produce Amazon’s Ringworld (which adapts Larry Niven’s story about a 200-year-old man on a future Earth) and produce Aurora Rising (which adapts Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff’s YA story about a misfit squad under the command of a recent Aurora Academy grad). Both stories are old-school space stories, even if their origins are decades apart. Neither has a premiere date yet.