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WIRE Buzz: Star Trek universe expands; Bruce Campbell kills MK11 Ash rumor; more
CBS is still discovering the untapped potential of its widening Star Trek universe, thanks to a freshly inked agreement that promises to bring a whole new constellation of future Trek projects to life on digital platforms.
The Wrap reports that the network has just launched an entirely new business division devoted to putting Star Trek in the palm of your hand, via the creation of Star Trek Global Franchise Management — an in-house franchising group on a mission to “branch out to podcasts, a new beefed-up website and other digital avenues.”
While there aren’t yet specific details on what’s in store for Star Trek on the mobile and online frontiers, the deal shows just how confident CBS has grown in the evergreen, cross-generational appeal of Gene Roddenberry's expansive sci-fi world.
On the TV side, the network now has no fewer than five Trek projects either under way or in development, including the upcoming CBS All Access series starring Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard, as well as the Star Trek: Discovery spinoff series based on Michelle Yeoh’s exploits as Capt. Philippa Georgiou.
There’s also the main Discovery series itself, now headed for a third season, as well as a Nickelodeon cartoon series, the more adult-oriented Lower Decks animated series in the works from Rick and Morty creator Mike McMahan, and the ongoing Short Treks web series. Stay tuned for more announcements as Star Trek prepares to boldly go with us everywhere — or, at least, everywhere there's an internet connection.
If you’re gonna quash a Mortal Kombat rumor, you might as well quash it with extreme prejudice. That seems to be the going mantra for everyone’s favorite career zombie killer — and who are we to argue with the super-sweet finishing move Bruce Campbell just put on the rumor that he’d be bringing Evil Dead’s Ash to future Mortal Kombat 11 content?
Campbell adopted the iconic gaming franchise’s classic victory screen style to vehemently put down a recent internet whisper that Ash will show up as an eventual DLC character in NetherRealm’s newest fighting epic, posting a hilarious faux screenshot to Twitter that leaves him standing over the lifeless remains of a piece of gaming gossip that, sadly, sounded too good to be true — and was.
At least Campbell knows how to be entertaining even when he’s announcing that he’s not going to be entertaining. Mortal Kombat 11 will be just fine, though; it wasn’t exactly character-starved in the first place. You can revisit Campbell in Ash vs Evil Dead on Netflix and Amazon now, and pick up Mortal Kombat 11 — without our chainsaw-toting hero, alas — for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
If you want to know how China does a sci-fi blockbuster, now you need look no further than your Netflix scroll.
After revealing earlier this year that The Wandering Earth would wander onto the streaming giant at some point, Netflix has quietly debuted China’s highest-grossing sci-fi movie ever (and the second-biggest Chinese movie of all time), dropping the English-dubbed version onto the platform today, May 6, to little fanfare.
Released earlier this year to a global box office that scraped the $700 million mark with almost no play in the U.S., The Wandering Earth adapts a short story from best-selling sci-fi author Liu Cixin (The Three-Body Problem) into a film about the race to avert a solar catastrophe by relocating everyone on Earth to a new home in outer space. In February, Netflix (which isn’t available in China) announced its plan to translate the movie into 28 languages en route to a streaming release in more than 190 countries.
The movie reportedly has even earned the admiration of sci-fi directing legend James Cameron, whose Terminator franchise reportedly was one of the movie's biggest inspirations, so it’s definitely going into our Netflix queue. What about yours?
