WIRE Buzz: The Letter for the King first look; PETA lauds genre; Mortal Kombat animated trailer

Netflix is still riding that high fantasy game in a post-Witcher world, with its newest contribution to the genre of swords and sorcery being the Tonke Dragt adaptation The Letter for the King. Based on the 1962 Dutch novel of the same name, the tale looks to be a YA-skewed adventure of young knights-in-training, evil princes, foretold heroes, and (of course) secret letters. For the king, you see.

Tiuri (Amir Wilson) leads the way as the young soon-to-be-knight that becomes an important messenger. Think 1917 meets Game of Thrones. Ruby Serkis, David Wenham, Peter Ferdinando, Thaddea Graham, and Gijs Blom fill out the cast of the six-episode show from writer and showrunner Will Davies (How To Train Your Dragon). In fact, Netflix has released a few photos of the kids in action to give fans a taste of the adventure in store.

Check them out:

Looks like relatively standard fare, but with its lead a veteran of both His Dark Materials and The Kid Who Would Be King, The Letter for the King could offer its genre setting to an underserved, younger streaming audience.

No release date is yet set for The Letter for the King.

Next, as the Oscars approach and awards season comes to an end, genre fans might still be wondering where all the love is for their favorite films. Well, they may now find an unexpected advocate in their corner: PETA. The animal rights group recently released their list of film award winners (for their Oscats) and genre films all but dominated the affair.

Turns out that the worlds of animation, science fiction, fantasy, and horror respect and love animals. The Lion King’s lionless (well, completely animal-less) film took home Best Picture simply by achieving photoreal animated animals without the use of real animal actors at all.

Dumbo and Cats were similarly awarded for these reasons, while Ad Astra’s space baboon and Abominable’s yeti were both heralded as icons against animal testing. Finally plenty of vegans landed prizes, including Joker’s own Joaquin Phoenix, who earned Best Actor.

The real Academy Awards air on Feb. 9 (but will still probably not harm any animals during its broadcast).

Finally, in anticipation of the upcoming live-action return of Mortal Kombat, the legendary fighting game franchise is releasing another movie: this time an R-rated animated feature called Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge. The direct-to-video release just dropped its first trailer and it looks like it’ll be heavily inspired by the narratives of some of the games.

Mortal Kombat 9 (or just Mortal Kombat) helped reboot the franchise and serves as a basis for the film from director Ethan Spaulding (Justice League: Throne of Atlantis) and writer Jeremy Adams (Teen Titans Go! Vs. Teen Titans). Fans might even recognize some familiar voices among the cast.

Take a look:

Yes, that’s Joel McHale as Johnny Cage. He joins Jennifer Carpenter’s Sonya Blade, as well as Patrick Seitz’s Scorpion. Of course there’s a tournament to end all tournaments — with the fate of the world hanging in the balance — and of course things get super, super bloody. The first animated film for the franchise doesn’t look like it’ll deviate from the tried-and-true norm.

Mortal Kombat Legends: Scorpion’s Revenge comes out this spring, while the live-action reboot will hit theaters on January 15, 2021.