Create a free profile to get unlimited access to exclusive videos, sweepstakes, and more!
WIRE Buzz: Doctor Who holiday special filmed before pandemic; The Reckoning to open Fantasia; more
The TARDIS will be around to spread holiday cheer in December. Mandip Gill, who plays Doctor Who's Yasmin "Yaz" Khan, confirmed to Entertainment Weekly that the show's 2020 holiday special (titled "Revolution of the Daleks") was able to finish shooting before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
"There is a festive episode," Gill said. "We happened to be quite lucky and fit it in, so that will be exciting."
Gill joined the show for Season 11 along with Jodie Whittaker, who portrays the most current iteration of the Doctor (the first woman ever to do so). When production on Season 12 kicked off, Gill says the cast began to settle into a state of comfort and camaraderie.
"It just felt like we knew what we were doing, we knew our characters way more this time, there weren't as many questions that we needed to ask about our background," Gill told EW. "Personally, for me, I started to understand a lot more of the sci-fi, whereas in the first series I would be like, 'What is she saying?'"
When asked about guest stars like Jo Martin (who played the franchise's first black Time Lord), Gill said: "The thing that I find really interesting is a lot of the older people who come in, this is something that they've wanted to do for a very long time," she said. "They're not bothered about saying, 'I'm fangirling over the Doctor' or 'Can I hold the sonic?' and stuff, they're very open about it."
Season 12 is now available on DVD and Blu-ray.
Fantasia Film Festival is going virtual this year and will open with The Reckoning, a plague-related horror project directed by Hellboy's Neil Marshall. The film is described as "a poignant and horrific period thriller set in 1665 against the backdrop of the Great Plague and the subsequent witch hunts in England."
Charlotte Kirk (Ocean's 8), Sean Pertwee (Gotham), Joe Anderson (The Crazies), Steven Waddington (The Imitation Game), and Emma Campbell-Jones (Doctor Who) co-star in the project.
Marshall previously opened the festival in 2005 with his spelunking-inspired horror movie, The Descent.
Chino Moya's Undergods; Sidharth Srinivasan's Kriya; Mauro Iván Ojeda's The Undertaker's Home; and John C. Lyons and Dorota Swies' Unearth are also among the "first wave" lineup.
Fantasia is set to take place between Thursday, Aug. 20, and Wednesday, Sept. 2. The full schedule will be announced in early August.
The 2020 MTV Movie & TV Awards have been delayed indefinitely by the pandemic, Variety confirmed.
The ceremony, which usually airs in June, is now in limbo, although the network was mulling over an option to hold it in December. The Video Music Awards, on the other hand, might take place at Brooklyn's Barclays Center at the end of August.
"We're exploring with government officials, the medical community and key stakeholders on how to safely hold the 2020 VMAs at Barclays Center on August 30th,” an MTV spokesperson said in a statement to Variety earlier this month. "The health of everyone involved is our number one priority. Additionally, we are working on several contingency plans to bring music's biggest night to audiences everywhere."
Last year's Movie & TV Award winners included Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, Bird Box, The Handmaid's Tale, and Game of Thrones. Shazam!'s Zachary Levi served as host.
BET, another Viacom channel, will hold a virtual edition of its annual prize ceremony Sunday, June 28.
