First Guests Announced for Festival of Fantastic Films

guests fantastic films

The wonderful Festival of Fantastic Films, which takes place in October in Manchester, has announced the first guests for the 2026 event.

Appearing at the festival will be Susan Penhaligan, a renowned actor known for such films as The Land That Time Forgot (1974), Pete Walker’s House of Mortal Sin (1976), the BBC adaptation of Count Dracula (1977), and Patrick: Evil Awakes (2013) as well as numerous appearances on TV in the likes of Doctor Who, Tales of the Unexpected, and A Ghost Story for Christmas: The Dead Room.

Joining Susan will be Louise Jameson, who played the hugely popular former Doctor Who companion, Leela. Louise also starred in The Omega Factor, the 1979 series currently being repeated on Talking Pictures TV.

Filmmaker and author Sean Hogan will also be in attendance. Sean’s film To Fire You Come at Last screened at last year’s festival. As well as writing and directing horror plays, his novels England’s Screaming and Twilight’s Last Screaming have been hugely popular with fans.

Another welcome addition is actor Spencer Banks, famous for his role in the classic ‘70s children’s sci-fi series Timeslip. He also played the lead in the brilliant BBC folk horror Play for Today, Penda’s Fenn.

Louise Jameson
Sean Hogan
Spencer Banks
Susan Penhaligan

Established in 1990, the Festival of Fantastic Films is a welcoming, intimate affair that is the highlight of many fans’ calendars. It takes place from October 23rd to 25th at the Pendulum Hotel and Conference Centre in Manchester. Tickets are available here.

Colchester Gets a Midsummer Scream from Black Sunday

Black Sunday Film Festival returns with its annual summer mini-fest Midsummer Scream on Saturday July 18th at Firstsite in Colchester.

Alongside a stacked selection of feature presentations and acclaimed short films, audiences can once again experience the festival’s legendary Cult Film Secret Screening – a much-loved Black Sunday tradition guaranteed to surprise and delight devotees of cult cinema. Single tickets and day passes are on sale now.

The festival opens with the UK premiere of Deep Water, a shark-infested thriller from director Renny Harlin, starring Aaron Eckhart and Ben Kingsley. Next comes the UK premiere of Match, the chilling new feature from director Daniska Esterhazy.

The festival then welcomes the Essex premiere of We Put the World to Sleep, the latest mind-bending work from cult filmmaker Adrian Tofei. Then there’s the Essex premiere of Appofeniacs, a dark and explosive contemporary thriller from filmmaker Chris Marrs Piliero.

We Put the World to Sleep

The evening then reaches its finale in true Black Sunday fashion with the Cult Film Secret Screening. This year’s hand-picked mystery selection is a rarely screened cult classic and promises to be the perfect late-night summer big screen experience for all devoted horror hounds.

Accompanying each screening is a striking international line-up of genre short films from emerging filmmakers. This year’s selections include Foreign Bodies (Lysander Wong), F*ckface (Dean Puckett), He (Hira Vin), Itch (Joe Savage), and The Eating of Sin (Gaius Milne Brown).

The night concludes with the Black Sunday Afterparty, bringing together filmmakers, guests, and audiences for a late-night celebration of independent genre cinema following the Cult Film Secret Screening.

BSFF Midsummer Scream 2026 is sponsored by Love Horror and Signature Entertainment.

For more information on the Black Sunday Film Festival and its upcoming events, visit: blacksundayff.com or follow the festival on X and Instagram @blacksunday_ff. 

Armando Iannucci Tapped To Direct PADDINGTON 4

armando iannucci to pen script for paddington 4

The Thick of It and Veep creator Armando Iannucci is taking on Britain’s favourite marmalade-eating bear, with news that the Scottish comedian will be penning the script for Paddington 4.

The latest chapter in the bear’s adventure saga will be written by both Iannucci and his longtime collaborator Simon Blackwell. The pair have worked together on political satire series The Thick of It, Veep, and its spinoff, In The Loop, as well as on the 2017 black comedy The Death of Stalin and 2019’s The Personal History of David Copperfield. Iannucci also directed the latter two. Based on those projects alone, it does appear that Paddington will be a rather dramatic change of space for the duo.

When the fourth Paddington movie was announced earlier this year, the Studiocanal chief executive, Anna Marsh, said that “world-renowned comedy writers” had been hired to write it, but had let slip nothing else.

Variety also reported that Dougal Wilson, who made his feature directorial debut with Paddington in Peru, is in talks to return for the next instalment. The first two films were directed by Paul King.

Other than that, information on Paddington 4 remains scarce, but stay tuned for any information about potential plot points or a release date as we hear.

X-MEN ’97 Season 2 Trailer Sees Mutants Lost In Time

jean grey and cyclops in the season 2 trailer for x-men '97

“The X-Men are scattered through time; In the past, from the start of Apocalypse’s reign, to the future, at the height of his rule,” so announces the X-Men ’97 season 2 trailer!

The season 1 finale left our heroes scattered across time. Magneto, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Beast, and Xavier wound up in Ancient Egypt in 3000BC, where the first mutant, Apocalypse, first emerged. Elsewhere, Jean Grey and Cyclops were sent 2000 years into the future, to be reunited with their son in a post-Apocalypse world.

Per the official synopsis: “X-Men ’97 Season 2 continues with the heroic mutant team of X-Men, divided and thrown across different eras in time as they struggle to navigate their return home. Meanwhile, back in the 1990s, suspicious foes and new strains of mutant intolerance are on the rise in the wake of the X-Men’s absence.”

Among the voice cast for this nine-episode second season are Ross Marquand as Professor X, Matthew Waterson as Magneto, Ray Chase as Cyclops, Jennifer Hale as Jean Grey, Alison Sealy-Smith as Storm, Cal Dodd as Wolverine, Lenore Zann as Rogue, and George Buza as Beast.

X-Men ’97 season 2 arrives on Disney+ on July 1st. Watch the trailer below:

ANGEL HEART Series Adaptation To Star Zac Efron

robert de niro in angel heart

A new adaptation of William Hjortsberg’s 1978 novel Falling Angel, which was famously turned into the Robert De Niro-starring neo-noir horror movie Angel Heart in 1987, is on the way from A24 and HBO. The television series will star Zac Efron.

Per Deadline, who broke the news, “Based on William Hjortsberg’s 1978 novel Falling Angel and the sequel Angel’s Inferno, the series will follow a down-and-out NYC paparazzi, who makes his living finding and photographing people who don’t want to be found. He is hired by a mysterious man to find a missing woman. But the deeper he digs to find her, the more it looks like a group of powerful elites, and maybe something supernatural, are covering up the disappearance.”

Creed III and Black Rabbit’s Zach Baylin is writing and executive producing, while Zac Efron will also executive produce. Jonathan van Tulleken, best known for directing several episodes of Shogun, is directing.

This marks the third project collaboration between Efron and A24, after 2023’s wrestling drama The Iron Claw. Next is the dark comedy Famous from director Jody Hill, in which Efron stars opposite Phoebe Dynevor.

Angel Heart does not yet have a planned release date. Stay tuned for updates as we hear.

PRIMETIME Teaser Trailer Sees Robert Pattinson As Chris Hansen

robert pattinson plays chris hansen in primetime film about to catch a predator

Robert Pattinson loves any excuse to put on a weird voice, and his latest role is no exception: he stars in the new teaser trailer for Primetime, A24’s upcoming film in which he plays broadcast journalist Chris Hansen, the face of the former Dateline NBC series To Catch a Predator.

Primetime is directed by documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim (Some Kind of Heaven) in his narrative feature debut. Set in 2006, when the bulk of the series’ episodes aired, the film follows Hansen and his crew working with law enforcement and hiring “decoys” to trap and arrest suspected pedophiles. The show drew millions of viewers.

However, 2006 was also the year when a target of To Catch a Predator, named Bill Conradt, shot and killed himself right as officers and the film crew entered his home. The incident led to the end of the show.

This is Pattinson’s second A24 film this year, following The Drama. He’ll also soon be seen in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and in Dune: Part Three, as well as in Netflix’s Here Comes the Flood.

Primetime also stars Merritt Wever, Skyler Gisondo, Matthew Maher, Bokeem Woodbine, and Phoebe Bridgers.

Primetime is expected to release in cinemas this autumn. Watch the trailer below:

BABYLON 5 Heads to LEGEND

The cult sci-fi TV show Babylon 5 is heading back to screens as it lands on LEGEND from June 8th.

The show’s synopsis is:

Following a war between Earth and the Minbari, the Babylon 5 station is built to foster peace and trade among various alien species. It serves as a neutral ground, often described as the “last best hope for peace”. Major plotlines included intra-race intrigue and upheaval, inter-race wars and their aftermaths, and embroilment in a millennial cyclic conflict between ancient races. The human characters, in particular, become pivotal to the resistance against Earth’s descent into totalitarianism.

The series will kick off with Babylon 5: The Gathering, the test pilot movie, before Season One launches. The Gathering covers events which take place roughly one year before those of the first-season episode, providing a framework of backstories and personal relationships for some of the series’ major characters, which include Captain John Sheridan, (Bruce Boxleitner), Commander Susan Ivanova (Claudia Christian), Security Chief Michael Garibaldi (Jerry Doyle), and Ambassador Delenn (Mira Furlan).  Following the end of Season Five, fans can also enjoy the Babylon 5 made-for-TV movies: In The Beginning, Thirdspace, The River Of Souls, A Call To Arms, The Legend Of The Rangers, and The Lost Tales.

Unlike typical episodic shows of the ‘90s, Babylon 5 was designed to be told in five seasons, with each episode serving as a chapter in a much larger narrative. In an almost unheard-of feat for American television, creator J. Michael Straczynski wrote 92 out of the 110 episodes himself. It was also a pioneer in using CGI for its space battles and is lauded for its deep character arcs, in which individuals change permanently over the five-year story, often featuring morally grey characters rather than simple heroes and villains. Even years later, the show is highly regarded.

Babylon 5 joins LEGEND’s eclectic catalogue of classic shows and movies. You can tune in on Sky, Virgin Media, Freeview, Freesat, and Freely.

VOUGHT RISING Spinoff Series Teases First Look

stormfront in vought rising trailer

The world of The Boys is rewinding to the ’50s, with Prime Video releasing a first look at their new spinoff series, Vought Rising. The series will explore the origins of Vought International, the Amazon-coded evil megacorp at the centre of the hit franchise. It’s been described as a murder mystery.

At the centre of the new show are Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy, Aya Cash as Stormfront, Mason Dye as Bombsight, Elizabeth Posey as Private Angel, and Will Hochman as Torpedo. KiKi Layne, Jorden Myrie, Nicolo Pasetti, Ricky Staffieri, and Brian J. Smith also star.

Paul Grellong will serve as showrunner and executive producer. Eric Kripke, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, James Weaver, Neal H. Moritz, Pavun Shetty, Ori Marmur, Ken Levin, Jason Netter, Garth Ennis, Darick Robertson, Michaela Starr, and Jim Barnes also serve as executive producers on the series. 

Kripke recently teased that viewers should expect a much grittier tone than The Boys, which we deem to be relatively gritty already. “It’s definitely got some Boys‘ DNA in that it’s irreverent and graphic,” Kripke said. “But it has this sort of lovely, almost noir-like murder mystery — not Black Noir but actual noir. There are detectives and twists, and there’s a murder that then opens up into a bigger conspiracy.”

Vought Rising will premiere in 2027.

The Daniels’ Next Feature Lands Matt Damon

matt damon joining everything everywhere all at once directors daniels in next project for universal

The Daniels have found their leading man in Matt Damon. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the filmmaking duo known as Daniels, who shot to fame with their seven-Oscar-winning sensation Everything Everywhere All at Once, are working on their first outing since 2023.

Matt Damon is in talks to star in the Universal film. Daniels have been working on this project for three years now, facing budget, script, and casting issues. The story is described as involving global warming, time travel, as well as a possible superhero angle. It’ll follow two timelines, one in the 1980s and one in the present day. The protagonists of the story are teenagers in the earlier timeline.

Daniels have been working on this project for the past three years, powering through challenges of budget, script and casting. The latest issues involved the latter two. The filmmaking pair were previously eyeing Ryan Gosling as the big name for their feature, in the role of one of the teens’ fathers.

Complications surrounding production dates, tax credit deadlines, and requests for script revisions led to Gosling exiting the project shortly after signing on. With Damon now in the role, we can expect the rest of the cast to be announced soon.

RICK AND MORTY Feature Film Finds Director

rick and morty adult swim series

Rick and Morty are making their way to the big screen. Jacob Hair, who has directed several episodes in the beloved Adult Swim series since 2019, is in talks to helm an animated feature version for Warner Bros. Plot details are being kept quiet, and the film is still in the early development stage.

This is in addition to the spinoff series President Curtis, featuring voice actor Keith David in the main role, which will premiere soon.

Rick and Morty is co-created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, and centres on inventor Rick Sanchez and his universe-travelling adventures with his grandson, Morty. Roiland originally voiced both titular characters, but Adult Swim cut ties with the co-creator in 2023 following felony domestic abuse charges, which were later dismissed. The roles have since been recast.

The ninth season of the show is premiering this week and has already been renewed through season 12. Jacob Hair serves as supervising director of the show.

Back in 2023, Harmon had spoken with The Hollywood Reporter about his conversations with Warner Bros. executives about a potential movie, stating: “My philosophy would be to just take a Rick and Morty adventure, and spend a bunch of extra money on it and make it 90 minutes long. Not to try to earn its feature status by virtue of canonical dramatic tone shifts or anything like that, but rather to just make it a super badass episode of Rick and Morty.“