It’s time to catch up on some movie trailers, from DC Comics to Star Trek, and Star Wars to more Disney fairy tale movies, to a pair of new sci-fi series and a pair of British movies, a weird rock music biopic, and the return of Gregory Mcdonald’s intrepid reporter Irwin M. Fletcher aka Fletch.
Grab your coffee and get ready for a half hour of previews.
Where shall we begin?
Review by C.J. Bunce
One hundred and eighty-five years after Hans Christian Andersen first penned his fairy tale The Little Mermaid, the most famous fish out of water story continues to charm readers of all ages. Countless editions of Andersen’s famous story, along with his other famous works, have been printed and reprinted, and adapted for the small screen and big screen with the latest–a live-action version–coming from Disney by the end of the year, incorporating songs from the studio’s 1989 version. But if you haven’t read the original fairy tale lately–or at all–you may be surprised to learn how much closer the 1984 live-action movie Splash was to the original. With the new film on its way, what better time to revisit the original, and we’ve found an incredible new, lavishly illustrated edition from designers MinaLima that makes a great storybook to read to kids, full of interactive elements. Check out a preview of The Little Mermaid and Other Fairy Tales for borg readers below, along with some details of what you’ll find inside, including some important fairy tales everyone, of every age, should know.
All my life, I’ve been waiting for someone and when I find her, she’s… she’s a fish.
With 13 nominations and expected to lead in overall wins in tonight’s Academy Awards ceremony, The Shape of Water is the film of the hour, and the popularity of the sea creature lore is at a peak right now. Taking advantage of the interest in seafaring lore and gilled creatures, the Freeform channel (formerly ABC Family) is airing new trailers this weekend for its own new mermaid/merman series, Siren. It’s not Splash or The Little Mermaid. It looks like it may have more of the feel of The Creature from the Black Lagoon at least initially more so than The Shape of Water. No, the new series Siren looks more like a thriller or horror series than a romance, something mixing Stephen King’s Haven with John Carpenter’s The Fog and The Thing, and the British space vampire cult classic, Lifeforce.
Eline Powell (Game of Thrones, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword) plays Ryn, a mysterious girl who arrives in the Pacific Northwest coastal town of Bristol Cove, a town that boasts its local lore–a town once known for its mermaids. Aylya Marzolf plays a mermaid leader, and Sedale Threatt, Jr. a warrior merman. From its several preview trailers, Siren has a great, creepy look. Art direction is by The Predator and The Returned’s Peter Mihaichuk. Costumes were designed by Pirates of the Caribbean and The Exorcist’s Lorraine Carson and iZombie and The Flash’s Maria Livingstone.
Based on a story by Eric Wald and Dean White (originally to be called The Deep), marketing for Siren is evoking all the aforementioned films and TV shows in its key imagery–even the back of a man in a parka straight out of The Thing, a strange killer young woman as seen in Lifeforce and The Ring, a trapped creature being studied in an aquarium as in The Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Shape of Water. And it features that familiar coastal town seen in Jaws, Haven, and The Fog.
Check out these several previews for Freeform’s Siren:
