Netflix has just released its first teaser trailer for the second season of Castlevania: Nocturne. Have a look:
As evidenced from the trailer, the show’s second season will see Richter Belmont (Edward Bluemel) team-up with the newly-arrived Alucard (James Callis, reprising his role from Castlevania) to put an end to Erzsebet Báthory (Franka Potente) and her quest to gain the power of the goddess Sekhmet herself, in a loose adaptation of Symphony of the Night–what many believe to be the high water mark of the video game franchise. As the show’s first season ended with our heroes on the run following Tera’s (Nastassja Kinski) futile effort to appease Erzsebet, Alucard’s sudden arrival–and swift defeat of Drolta (Elarica Johnson)–was a welcome balm to an otherwise grim finale. To finally see proof-of-life for this second season feels strangely rewarding, somehow, and we’re excited to see how this strained Belmont/Alucard alliance plays out. We’re guessing they’ll be respected allies by the end of it, don’t you? After all, it’s kind of what Alucard does with that bloodline at this point.
Castlevania: Nocturne‘s second season will see the return of Edward Bluemel as Richter Belmont, James Callis as Alucard, Richard Dormer as Emmanuel, Thuso Mbedo as Annette, Pixie Davies as Maria Renard, Nastassja Kinski as Tera Renard, Sydney James Harcourt as Edouard, Aaron Neil as Mizrak, Zahn McLarnon as Orlox, Iain Glen as Juste Belmont, and Franka Potente as Erzsebet Báthory/Sekhmet. It’s set to premiere sometime this January 2025 on Netflix.
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The first announcement from Netflix’s annual “Geeked Week” celebrations, today the streamer dropped the first trailer for The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, a documentary mixing archival footage with animation from inside Blizzard’s 20-year-old pop culture legend, World of Warcraft.
Directed by Benjamin Ree, Ibelin followes the story of Mats Steen, a young Norwegian man who died of a muscular degenerative disease at just 25. While his family thought Mats’ disease had left him isolated and alone up until his death, they discover that Mats’ social life flourished through years of playing his World of Warcraft character, Ibelin, touching the lives of a whole community of people across the world through the realms of Azeroth.
The documentary–which won the Audience Award at the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance earlier this year–mixes archival family footage of Mats growing up and living with his condition, as well as his time playing games, with interviews with Warcraft players who knew him only as Ibelin, and the impact he had on their lives through the MMORPG. But fascinatingly, the documentary will also feature narrated excerpts from Mats’ blog journaling his second life in Azeroth, alongside recreations of his adventures performed via machinima using World of Warcraft‘s game engine as it exists now. Warcraft underwent a graphical update in 2014 to mark its 10th anniversary with the release of Warlords of Draenor, overhauling the player character models with more detail and animated expressiveness, which Ibelin uses to great effect here. We’ve come a long way since South Park did “Make Love, Not Warcraft“.
The Remarkable Life of Ibelin is set to come to Netflix in the near future.
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Netflix has never quite cracked the talk show formula, but maybe it can borrow an existing hit from YouTube.
According to Bloomberg, the streamer is in talks with BuzzFeed to create live episodes of the popular YouTube talk show “Hot Ones.” Netflix and BuzzFeed did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
The show launched back in 2015, and the format — with host Sean Evans interviewing celebrity guests as they struggle to eat increasingly spicy chicken wings — has proven surprisingly durable, with new episodes sometimes attracting tens of millions of viewers on YouTube. (Evans will reportedly host the live Netflix episodes, as well.)
As traditional late night talk shows struggle with declining ratings and shrinking budgets, “Hot Ones” become a regular stop on the promotional circuit for pop stars and Hollywood actors. BuzzFeed, which picked up “Hot Ones” through its acquisition of Complex, has reportedly tried and failed to sell the show as it faces a debt repayment deadline at the end of the year.
Netflix, meanwhile, has experimented on-and-off with the talk format, for example with two seasons of a show hosted by Chelsea Handler. Arguably its greatest achievement thus far has been the recent “John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s In LA” — which was absolutely delightful, but it was seemingly designed as a short-lived, shambolic experiment; it’s not clear if there will be a second season.
Why turn the normally pre-recorded “Hot Ones” into a live show? Well, the promise of seeing a celebrity melt down without the protection of editing could make these specials stand out from the regular program. Plus, Netflix has been experimenting with live content, from stand-up specials to reality TV reunions to WWE “Raw.”
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