While HBO Max and Peacock, which are respectively operated by WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal, are available on platforms such as mobile devices, most smart TVs, and online via their own websites, Roku and Fire TV are notable exceptions. It’s possible that a deal for HBO Max could still be months away — Jason Kilar, WarnerMedia’s new CEO, discussed a handful of topics with Bloomberg in early August and suggested there may be a solution around Christmas when hardware sales would spike....

The upcoming spinoff prequel series has a more racially diverse cast, including an elite Black family comprising the House of Velaryon, a central ruling family with deep political ties in Westeros. Co-showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik set out for a “reimagining” of George R.R. Martin’s original books when bringing them to the screen. The spinoff premieres August 21. “It was very important for Miguel and I to create a show that was not another bunch of white people on the screen,” Condal told Entertainment Weekly....

With the unfortunate exception of “Songbird,” which tried to wangle a Michael Bay movie out of the pandemic by turning the pandemic into a Michael Bay movie, the first wave of films written and shot during COVID have all been as confined as any of the people watching them from home. But leave it to Ben Wheatley — an irrepressible British filmmaker whose best movies (“Kill List,” “High-Rise,” “Sightseers”) have always felt like claustrophobic reactions to the psychic horrors of modern living — to zag where the likes of “Locked Down,” “Coastal Elites,” and “Malcolm & Marie” have zigged, and leverage our suffocating new status quo into an open-air horror movie that will make you never want to go outside again....

“Scream queen” is a maddeningly nebulous term with simple enough origins. The phrase was popularized among casting directors after the iconic performance of Fay Wray in 1933’s “King Kong” and would be used for decades to describe genre actresses from Janet Leigh in 1960’s “Psycho” to her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in 1978’s “Halloween” and beyond. These days it’s tossed around with some frequency, used interchangeably — and incorrectly — with the term “final girl”: the last character (most often played by women but they can be of any gender expression!...

“Morimoto’s Sushi Master” stars Masaharu Morimoto, a Japanese chef and restaurateur best known for his appearances on the original Japanese cooking competition show “Iron Chef” and its American adaptation on the Food Network. Morimoto will serve as the head judge for the new six-episode series, which sees eight chefs competing in various challenges to master the art of sushi making. Actress Lyrica Okano from Hulu’s “Runaways” hosts the series, which features Santa Fe’s Coyote Café head chef Dakota Weiss and New York Times food columnist Kenji Lopez-Alt as additional judges....

When you put “ends” right there in the title, you’re asking for it. Such is the pickle for David Gordon Green’s trilogy-capper “Halloween Ends.” So, is this really the end of the iconic franchise? Green has a diplomatic answer. “I think evil doesn’t die, it changes shape,” Green told IndieWire. “And that can become something to really think about, the negativity that you could be greeted with at some moment in your day....

Following over a decade of discussions around the English-language adaptation of his 1989 classic film, Woo confirmed that he will helm a reimagining for Peacock in collaboration with Universal Pictures. “The Killer” is about a seasoned assassin who takes on one last job, during which he accidentally blinds a nightclub singer. In order to pay for an operation to fix her sight, the killer for hire agrees to assassinate a high-ranking triad boss, just as the police are tracking him down....