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      What Your Favorite Streaming Services Will Cost You in 2024

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      Amazon will start showing ads to some Prime Video subscribers who pay less. They’re not alone.If you were planning on watching the final season of “Jack Ryan” or eight seasons of “House” without commercials on Amazon Prime next year, get ready to dig a little deeper into your pockets.In September, Amazon announced it would soon add advertisements to Prime Video, its streaming service, and this week announced when that change would go into effect: Jan 29. Customers wanting to avoid the ads would have to pay an extra $2.99 a month.Less than a decade ago, the streaming era took off on the promise of letting users cut the cord from expensive cable bills and enjoy a blissful ad-free viewing experience. But as we enter 2024, Amazon isn’t the only service bringing back ads or driving prices higher.Studios and streaming companies that make all this entertainment say they are struggling, and that it’s getting increasingly hard to attract new customers. The result is higher prices, or plans that are cheaper but include ads.There are also other measures. This fall, Netflix announced a price hike and said it would start clamping down on users who share their passwords with people outside of their households for free.To help you make a choice for the new year, here’s what some of the main streaming services will cost and what they will offer. (All prices are in U.S. dollars and apply to U.S. accounts.)Amazon Prime VideoAmazon executives have said that including the video service helped keep people subscribed to its Prime memberships, which include free shipping.In 2022, the company completed its purchase of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — and, crucially, its extensive catalog of movies and television shows, including titles like James Bond, which is available on Prime Video.The current price for an Amazon Prime membership is $14.99 a month (or $139 per year). Prime Video by itself is $8.99 a month. For ad-free viewing, Amazon will add $2.99 per month to your bill starting Jan. 29. And careful: If you opt into a free trial, Amazon will automatically start charging you after it ends.John Turturro in “Severance” on Apple TV+.Wilson Webb/Apple TV+, via Associated PressApple TV+In 2019, Apple announced that it would start creating its own television shows and movies at an extremely star-studded event in California. The streaming service offers Apple originals — “Severance” and “Ted Lasso” — and a subscription can be shared with up to five people. There are no ads.A monthly subscription for the streaming service costs $9.99. Apple also offers three free months when you buy one of their devices.Disney+For $7.99 a month, subscribers get content with ads. For $13.99 a month (or $139.99 a year) you can stream Disney+ without ads and download content for when you’re offline.Its offerings include Pixar and Disney movies as well as “Star Wars” and Marvel movies and TV shows, 34 seasons of “The Simpsons” and about 7,500 episodes of old Disney-branded shows.MaxWarner Bros. Discovery unveiled this combined streaming service in April, rebranding the former HBO Max. An ad-free experience will cost you $15.99 a month. An “Ultimate ad-free” version for $19.99 allows users to add more devices to the account as well as up to 100 downloads. For a $9.99 add-on per month, you can also watch live sports.Max offers the “Harry Potter” movies, classic HBO shows such as “The Wire,” “The Sopranos” and “Sex and the City,” as well as newer releases, such as “Barbie.” The streamer has also ordered a “Harry Potter” TV series.HuluFor $17.99 a month you can watch Hulu’s vast catalog — titles include “New Girl,” “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Fargo” — without ads. If you’re willing to sit through commercials, it’s $7.99 a month.Hulu also offers the option of adding live television to your plan, as well as content from other streaming services such as Disney+ and ESPN+, although the latter does come with ads. Those options range from $75.99 to $89.99 a month.If you want to watch Lauren Graham, left, and Alexis Bledel in “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” that’ll be at least $6.99 a month on Netflix.Saeed Adyani/NetflixNetflixRaise your hand if you remember getting DVDs from Netflix in the mail in the early 2000s. In 2010, Netflix started selling its streaming service for $8 a month and offering one DVD at a time for an additional $2.Netflix now offers a $6.99 per month subscription, which is ad-supported, which the company says “allows you to enjoy movies and TV shows at a lower price.” A standard plan (without ads) is $15.49 a month. For access to more devices, the cost goes up to $22.99 a month. Adding additional people that aren’t included in your subscription will cost you an additional $7.99 per person per month. Netflix mailed its last DVD in September.Among its offerings: “Gilmore Girls,” “La La Land,” and international series such as “Squid Game.”Paramount+In 2021, CBS rebranded its streaming platform, which it heralded as “a big day, a new day, a new beginning.” That announcement came with promises of a “Frasier” reboot and a revival of the animated series “Rugrats.”A lot of other Paramount content can be found elsewhere. The company sold the rights to the “South Park” library to HBO Max, and series like “Jack Ryan,” produced by Paramount, have gone to Amazon.Paramount+ Essential will cost you $5.99 a month (or $59.99 a year) and includes “limited commercial interruptions.” The service also offers a bundle together with SHOWTIME in a plan that costs $11.99 a month (or $119.99 a year).PeacockThe premium subscription for NBC Universal’s streaming service will cost you $5.99 a month and includes original content, films, live sporting events and more. A Premium Plus subscription is priced at $11.99 a month and offers — mostly — no ads as well as the ability to download content.Some of the programs you can watch include “Parks and Recreation,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Downton Abbey,” and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” as well as Bravo content like the “Real Housewives” franchise. More

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      ‘The Buccaneers’ Arrives With More Arrivistes

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      This Apple TV+ drama joins HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” back for its second season, in portraying the late 19th-century collision of old money and new.A newly moneyed woman in Gilded Age New York is desperate to gain the acceptance of the aristocracy. So she schemes to get the ultimate symbol of old money approval: a box at the exclusive Academy of Music. When she is denied, she helps spearhead the construction of a new see-and-be-seen cultural playground, the Metropolitan Opera House. Take that, aristocracy.Welcome to the second season of HBO’s opulent drama “The Gilded Age,” a series laden with emblematic showdowns between the gaudy arrivistes and the idle drawing-room class. By chance, “The Gilded Age,” which returned last week, is back just ahead of “The Buccaneers,” a new series on Apple TV+ that is set amid the same late 19th-century collision of old money and new, robber barons and debutante balls, gold diggers and status obsession.“The Buccaneers,” which premieres Wednesday, sends its wealthy but not sufficiently connected young ladies, their frocks and their deeply insecure parents all the way to London, skipping the middleman of old American money and going right to the source in search of marriageable dukes and lords. As you might imagine, culture clashes and broken hearts ensue.Donna Murphy as Mrs. Astor, left, and Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell, based on real women like Alva Vanderbilt, in “The Gilded Age.”Barbara Nitke/HBOTV’s Gilded Age dramas are somehow both alluring and repellent. It’s fun to watch ugly Americans make like combative peacocks. And the social dynamics seem to resonate in the 21st century, even if the details feel exotic and unattainable.“Hierarchy of classes is something that people seem to be more preoccupied with right now than at other times in the past,” said Esther Crain, the author of the lavishly illustrated “The Gilded Age in New York” and creator of the historical website Ephemeral New York, in a phone interview. “There’s this vast gulf between the very rich and everyone else, with a vanishing middle class. This really echoes the Gilded Age.”The “Gilded Age” opera house showdown echoes a pitched battle from the end of Season 1, in which Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), the Academy of Music snub victim, hosts a buzzy ball at her palatial home for her teen daughter. She invites her daughter’s friend, whose mother, Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy), is the unofficial gatekeeper of the old-money elite. But then the gatekeeper snubs the social climber, who subsequently disinvites the gatekeeper’s daughter. The chess game is on, and the children are the pawns.In her book, Crain details the historical events behind both the music hall duel and the dance dust-up. In real life, it was Alva Vanderbilt who hosted a “fancy dress” masquerade ball in 1883, and who snubbed Mrs. Astor’s daughter, Caroline, prompting Mrs. Astor to show contrition to her nouveau riche rival. The showdown was seen as a major victory for new money over old.In actual late 19th-century New York, Alva Vanderbilt was a new-money upstart.Library of CongressCaroline Schermerhorn Astor represented the old guard of New York society.Wikimedia CommonsThe new rich, based in the Fifth Avenue mansions of Manhattan, were largely a product of the Civil War and new fortunes made in the railroad, copper, steel and other industries. (Bertha’s husband, George Russell, played by Morgan Spector, is a railroad tycoon who finds himself dealing with labor issues in Season 2.)Unlike the old-money aristocracy who traced their wealth to their European ancestors, the new rich thrived in industry and flaunted their wealth, much to the old rich’s disgust and chagrin.“They thought, ‘We’re Americans, we’re the new guys, we’ve got something new to sell in this world, and we have a place here,’” said the “Gilded Age” creator Julian Fellowes in a video interview from his home in London. “For me, the 1870s and 1880s was when modern America found itself. The new people building their palaces up and down Fifth Avenue were doing it the American way. This was an American culture — a new way of being rich, a new way of being successful.”Of course, the new rich could also be reckless and dangerous. In Season 1 of “The Gilded Age,” George, who Fellowes modeled on the railroad magnate Jay Gould, drives a corrupt alderman to suicide. He lives not just to defeat his opponents, but to crush them and their families. For him and his ilk, capitalism is a blood sport.Alisha Boe and Josh Dylan in “The Buccaneers,” inspired by real-life “dollar princesses” who married into titled European families.Apple TV+The games are a little different (if only slightly less brutal) in “The Buccaneers,” which is based on an unfinished novel by Edith Wharton. Looked down upon by the New York aristocracy and seeking suitable husbands, five young nouveau riche women high-tail it to London, where they and their financial resources are coveted by title-rich but cash-poor families. Nan (Kristine Froseth) is courted by a sensitive duke. Conchita (Alisha Boe) has a frisky marriage with a lord, whose parents are monstrous, anti-American snobs. All have romantic escapades that are, in many ways, brazenly transactional.“The girls’ mothers are coming over to London in order to effectively sell their girls into the aristocracy,” Katherine Jakeways, the series’s creator, said in a video interview from her London home. “And the aristocracy are welcoming them with open arms because they’ve got roofs to mend.”Added Beth Willis, an executive producer, from her home in Scotland: “How lonely that would be for so many of them. In America they might speak up a bit more at the dining table. They sometimes had their own money. And to come over to England and find these freezing cold houses with roofs literally falling in and being treated like a cash point must have just been awful.”Here, too, there is historical precedent. In one example, the socialite Consuelo Vanderbilt, of the shipping-and-railroad Vanderbilt family, married the ninth Duke of Marlborough, becoming perhaps the best known of what were called the “dollar princesses.”“Some of these marriages were arranged and didn’t end happily, but others did end happily,” said Hannah Greig, a historical consultant for “The Buccaneers.” “Sometimes the origins of the marriage were forgotten, and it became a love story. History offers lots of examples that you can draw on, for all of the different experiences that we see in ‘The Buccaneers.’”Both series include characters representative of people who existed in Gilded Age society, even if they were under-acknowledged at the time. In “The Buccaneers,” Mabel (Josie Totah) is torn between a marriage of convenience, to a man, and a romance of passion, with her friend Conchita’s new sister-in-law (Mia Threapleton). In “The Gilded Age,” the old-money Oscar Van Rhijn (Blake Ritson) carries on a passionate affair with John Adams, a scion of the presidential dynasty, all the while plotting his own marriage of convenience (and wealth) with the Russells’ debutante daughter, Gladys (Taissa Farmiga). (In a refreshing twist, the most avid gold diggers in both series are men.)Denée Benton stars in “The Gilded Age” as a member of New York’s Black elite, working with the journalist T. Thomas Fortune, played by Sullivan Jones.Barbara Nitke/HBOOne of the central characters in “The Gilded Age” is Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), a representative of 19th-century New York’s Black elite. At odds with her tradition-minded druggist father, Peggy goes to work for the real-life pioneering Black journalist T. Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones) and blazes her own trail, even as she faces down racism in her everyday life.Peggy’s story line gives the series a chance to look at issues of inequality that festered beneath the surface of the Gilded Age.“This season especially we see questions about the direction of Black America,” said Erica Dunbar, a Rutgers University history professor and “Gilded Age” historical consultant, in a video interview. “It’s a theme that still exists. What is the best way to move forward for a group of people who have already been marginalized or oppressed for hundreds of years at this point?”It all unfolds against a bloodless but volatile civil war between those who have been rich a long time and their freshly minted competition. The aristocracy’s view of the barbarians at the gate can be summed up by Agnes Van Rhijn (Christine Baranski), who has no interest in letting the newbies crash the party: “You shut the door, they come in the window.”But this is a fight Agnes won’t win. She can lock her windows, but the Metropolitan Opera House is coming soon. Despite the pitched battles of yore, if there’s one thing we’ve learned since it’s that money is money. And those who have the most generally have the upper hand, no matter the source of their riches. More

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      ‘For All Mankind’ Launches a Mission to Mars, With New Wrinkles

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      For a show that has aged its characters over many decades, the biggest challenge is not sending people to Mars but making them look believable once they arrive.When Ed Baldwin lands on the moon in October 1971, he is in early middle age. His light brown hair swoops across his forehead. His clean-shaven face is ruddy and, excepting a divot between his eyebrows, unwrinkled. But space can really age a man. By 2003, on Mars, his hair has grayed and receded, and the wrinkles have multiplied and deepened. His skin is sallow, marked with age spots. His cheeks have sunk in.Ed, a highly decorated astronaut, is a central character of the Apple TV+ series “For All Mankind.” He is played by the Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman, who was a few years younger than Ed during the first season, which debuted in 2019. Kinnaman is now 43, but in the fourth season, which premieres on Nov. 10, Ed is in his 70s. Which meant that Kinnaman’s shooting days typically began before dawn, with four hours in the hair and makeup chair.This is one of the myriad hurdles and minor miracles of “For All Mankind,” a series that posits a world in which the space race never ended. From its painstaking aging process to its imagination of an alternative past and interplanetary future, “For All Mankind” is both quiet and wild in its ambitions, a work of science fiction that retains the texture of observable reality. And in this coming season, which shows characters first seen in their 20s now in their 60s and 70s, the crew has had to work harder than ever to achieve plausibility. Sure, you can send men and women to Mars. But can you make them look believable once they arrive?The new season largely unfolds on a base on Mars.Apple TV+“When we were pitching the show, we were like, ‘Oh, this is going to be so great,’” Ben Nedivi, one of the show’s three creators, said during a recent video call. “Now that we’re in Season 4, the challenge has been enormous.”Season 1 began in 1969, when — mild spoilers for the first three seasons follow — in the initial shift from our own timeline, the Russians first land a man on the moon. It ended in 1974, with American men and women having built a lunar base. Season 2, which took place in the ’80s, expanded on this base. Season 3, set in the 1990s, brought Americans, Russians and a lone surviving North Korean to Mars. Season 4 jumps forward another decade. Throughout, the remaining characters are played by the same actors. (The exceptions are characters who first appear as children.)“For All Mankind,” which Nedivi created with Matt Wolpert, his fellow showrunner, and Ronald D. Moore, was always intended as a generational show. Its goal was to take the space race from the 1960s to the present and perhaps beyond, showing exploration and advancement across lifetimes.Sometimes those lifetimes are short. “Space is an insanely dangerous place,” Wolpert said. Otherwise the show’s format requires its characters to age a decade between seasons, without the use of computer-generated effects. (The C.G.I. on “For All Mankind” is for asteroids and explosions, not hair loss.)“The amount of time that Ben and I spend talking about hair and makeup and aging is not something we anticipated,” Wolpert said.“It doesn’t hurt that we’re aging during the show,” added Nedivi, who is visibly grayer than he was when the show debuted. “Trust me, I feel like I’m aging double-time.”From top, Joel Kinnaman in the first, second and third seasons. The makeup artists tried to age the stars subtly.Apple TV+This illusionism began years ago, in the initial casting sessions. Nedivi and Wolpert were looking for actors who were somewhat older than their characters, with the thought that they could be aged down for Season 1 and up beginning in Season 3.During Season 1, the makeup department, led by Erin Koplow, used foundation to give the actors a youthful, dewy look, covering up wrinkles and any discoloration. For the women, makeup appropriate to the era was laid over that. Hair was given extra luster.In the second season, the actors were more or less left alone, though some were given small pieces of what Koplow calls “stretch and stipple,” a latex solution that gives the appearance of fine lines. (The actors are mostly in their 30s, which means they should have fine lines of their own. That’s between them and their dermatologists.)For Season 3 there was more stretch and stipple, more gray hair. Kinnaman, whose character is older than most in the show, was given prosthetic silicone pieces, which created deeper wrinkles. If dark circles or eye bags existed, they were left uncorrected or were even accentuated. And the actors learned to hold themselves differently, better reflecting sore backs and joint pain.Several critics reviewing Seasons 2 and 3 found these interventions insufficient. “The effort to age its stars is negligible at best,” a Vanity Fair writer wrote of the third season. But this was intentional, meant to reflect a natural, gradual process.“With women in particular, it’s really easy to go too far and to make them monstrous with aging,” Glen P. Griffin, who oversees makeup’s special effects and prosthetics, said. “So you have to be really, really subtle.”That subtlety can be thankless: The actors don’t enjoy it; the viewers don’t see it. Griffin and Koplow both described believable middle-age makeup as the hardest part of the job. But this nuance is necessary. Should characters survive, the hair and makeup teams will have to intervene further.Kinnaman’s shooting days typically began before dawn, with hours in the hair and makeup chair.Apple TV+Costuming also helps to age and situate the characters. As with the makeup, the period clothes are meant to murmur, not to shout.“It’s best if they’re not overtly loud,” said Esther M. Marquis, the costume designer for the third and fourth seasons. “There has to be space for the actor to be who their character is. I don’t want to crowd in.”As the characters have aged, the tailoring has changed. “Hollywood loves to get all trim and put together, and that’s not really our show,” Marquis said. The fit in subsequent seasons does not always flatter, suggesting maturity, even subtle weight gain.The few costume pieces that do fit and do shout are the spacesuits, each of which is custom-built. While the suits in the first season were closely modeled on NASA’s designs, by Season 2, Americans had established a permanent base on the moon, outpacing current technologies. For the third and fourth seasons, Marquis had to imagine a suit appropriate for Mars’s climate that could be made mostly from materials and methods available in 2003.“The suit that I was designing had to live in both worlds, a future world and a past world,” she said. “I didn’t want to get too far away from a 2003 reality.”But Marquis did give herself some license, dreaming up a textile that would lead to a slimmer and more pliant silhouette. Most real spacesuits are 14 layers thick. Marquis’s are slighter, as are the astronauts’ backpacks, which would struggle to hold both life support and backup life support systems.“There’s a lot of action in Season 4,” she said. “So the suits had to get lighter.” She noted that the real-world suit designers she had spoken to were also wrestling with the same question.Kinnaman and Casey W. Johnson in Season 3 of “For All Mankind.” In the new season, the spacesuits had to be lighter.Apple TV+The show’s depiction of a different Earth extends beyond crow’s feet and helmets. Its approach to alternate reality is typically subtle. A Mars landing is an admittedly big swing, yet most of the other timeline changes are more restrained. Ted Kennedy skips the Chappaquiddick party. John Lennon survives. Michael Jordan plays for a different team.In each subsequent season, the divergence from our world is greater, a butterfly effect enhanced by the technologies the space race of the show has yielded. Most significantly, the moon’s supply of helium-3 has been mined for cold fusion, effectively solving the climate crisis. (Unscientific viewers like me might have assumed that helium-3 was among the show’s inventions. It’s very real.)This reflects the show’s arguably less subtle message, that something profound was lost when America gave up the space race.“That longing is what inspired us,” Nedivi said. “The show presupposes the idea that actually going out into the unknown and learning more about the world will teach us more about who we are and what we’re capable of.”Since the series’s 2019 debut, the space race has coincidentally begun to run just a little faster. More private companies have launched rockets. The Artemis 3 mission, slated for 2025, plans to land a woman and a person of color on the moon, both for the first time. There is new interest in mining metal-rich asteroids, a Season 4 plot point and another example of the show’s science fiction edging closer to reality.“A lot of the technology that we highlight has become part of the conversation in the real timeline,” Wolpert said. “That’s one of the secret weapons of our show: It’s not about impossible stuff. Nothing in our show is impossible.”Nedivi said “For All Mankind” was intended as escapism, as entertainment. “But if we can encourage further space travel,” he said, somewhat grandly, “that would be a huge plus.”While the show can’t take credit for advancing exploration, it has made at least one contribution to the space program, a small stitch for mankind. Last year, Axiom Space, a private company contracted to supply the suits for the upcoming Artemis missions, contacted Marquis. It wanted her to create a spacesuit cover, a garment meant to cloak Axiom’s proprietary technology during a news conference.“There’s no way they can use it in space because it is black and colored,” Marquis said of the cover. “But it was a wonderful experience.”Axiom has since asked her to design flight suits that real astronauts will eventually wear. In tailoring the flight suits for those astronauts, at Axiom’s Houston headquarters, Marquis was struck with a feeling of déjà vu.“It’s very similar to fitting an actor,” she said. “That’s crazy, right?” More

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      ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Debuts Apple’s New Film Strategy

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      Martin Scorsese’s three-and-a-half-hour epic is the first of three high-profile movies the tech company will give wide theatrical releases in the coming months.The box office results for Martin Scorsese’s new film, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” will be revealed on Sunday and analyzed by reporters and industry insiders. Did the movie perform well? Did it fall short? Did Leonardo DiCaprio’s inability to promote the film because of the actors’ strike ultimately mean fewer people went to see it?This is a normal opening weekend practice for any major theatrical release, but it will be a first for Apple Studios, the producer and financier of the $200 million movie. It is teaming up with Paramount Pictures to release the three-and-a-half-hour R-rated film in more than 3,600 theaters.Until now, Apple’s films were streaming-first. But “Killers of the Flower Moon” won’t reach its streaming service, Apple TV+, for at least 45 days. It is Apple’s clearest embrace of movie theaters since the start of Apple TV+ four years ago, and the first of three major theatrical releases from the company scheduled for the next six months.During Thanksgiving weekend, Sony Pictures will work with Apple to release Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” starring Joaquin Phoenix. In February, Apple is joining forces with Universal Pictures to release the spy caper “Argylle” in theaters around the country.Bradley Thomas, a producer of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” called Apple’s partnerships “comforting,” because traditional studios have decades of experience with theatrical releases.“So Apple is dipping its toe into it,” he said. “They aren’t taking the whole thing on by themselves.”The producer Kevin Walsh, who began developing “Napoleon” with Apple in 2020, has watched its approach to theatrical release evolve. The turning point, he said, came after the top Apple TV+ executives Jamie Erlicht and Zack Van Amberg saw the success that Paramount had with “Top Gun,” which brought in $1.5 billion at the global box office last year.“What ‘Top Gun’ did to the box office they are trying to emulate with movies like ‘Napoleon,’ and ‘Formula 1,’” Mr. Walsh said in an interview, referring to the upcoming Brad Pitt movie that Apple is making with the “Top Gun” director Joseph Kosinski. “I think there is money to be made, of course, for spectacle movies in the theater. But they also serve as a massive billboard for the Apple TV service when they are successful and rolled out well.”Apple’s recent embrace of movie theaters is welcome news for a movie theater business that has been upended by streaming companies’ penchant for making films largely for their at-home services. Netflix first disrupted the long-held tradition of the theatrical release by putting films in a limited number of theaters for a limited time — usually the minimum required to appease filmmakers and qualify for Oscar consideration.Amazon Studios recently reversed its approach, giving commercial films like Ben Affleck’s “Air” significant time in theaters before releasing them to streaming subscribers.Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” will open in theaters on Thanksgiving weekend.Sony Pictures and Apple Original FilmsBut Apple, with its deep pockets, reputation for secrecy (it doesn’t share streaming subscriber numbers and declined to comment for this article) and interest in controlling all components of its ecosystem, has surprised some with its willingness to team up with others to market its films to moviegoers. It’s a situation that leaves the company open to the vagaries of the theatrical marketplace.And “Killers,” with its high price tag, has to do big business to become a success. Analysts are predicting that the film could fetch anywhere from $18 million to $30 million in its opening weekend. That would be a tough beginning even for a film by Mr. Scorsese, whose movies traditionally have staying power in theaters and often eventually gross close to five times what they brought in on opening weekend. The film’s long run time and dark subject matter — the plot revolves around the murders of Native Americans — could also be commercial hurdles.“We are a little more bullish than the industry expectations floating around,” said Shawn Robbins, an independent box office analyst, who predicts the film will open in the $30 million range. “The film certainly has its hills to climb with a long run time and DiCaprio’s absence from the press circuit.”But “strong reviews and Mr. DiCaprio’s own box office history — especially with Mr. Scorsese — provide ample amounts of good will for audiences,” he added, and work in the film’s favor. “The market hasn’t had a high-profile film targeted toward adults for a while.” (“Oppenheimer,” with a similar run time and equally serious subject matter, defied odds this year and earned $942 million worldwide.)While Apple has said very little about its shift in strategy, theater owners are ecstatic.Apple is “a major company that has the ability to do a lot of high-quality work, and I think that the recognition on their part that movies belong in theaters is a strong signal,” Michael O’Leary, chairman of the National Association of Theater Owners, a trade association, said in an interview. “Prioritizing theatrical will help them get major filmmakers to come into their tents, and to create even more dynamic, entertaining fare in the years ahead.”Mr. Scorsese and his co-writer, Eric Roth, began adapting David Grann’s nonfiction book “Killers of the Flower Moon” in 2017. Paramount agreed to finance and distribute the film, but when the production costs soared, the studio brought in Apple in 2020 to finance the project.Others wanted it, said Mr. Thomas, who initially purchased the adaptation rights to “Killers” with his partner, Dan Friedkin. It was Apple, however, that guaranteed a full theatrical release — a must for Mr. Scorsese, whose last film, “The Irishman” for Netflix, had a truncated run in theaters.Paramount stayed on in a deal that saw Apple reimburse the studio for its development costs on the movie and a portion of Mr. Scorsese’s overall deal, according to two people with knowledge of the agreement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the details were not public. Paramount controls all theater bookings and media buys for the film’s trailers and commercials, while Apple controls its publicity and marketing materials.Apple made similar, though less expensive, deals with Sony Pictures for “Napoleon” and Universal Pictures for “Argyle,” with Sony and Universal sharing the marketing costs with Apple and handling each film’s distribution.And while all three studios would like the opportunity to enter into long-term partnerships with Apple, the tech giant has not committed to any one partner.“I’d be surprised if they take a single-studio approach for distribution,” said Tim Bajarin, chief executive of Creative Strategies, a high-tech research firm based in Silicon Valley. “Apple is willing to work, and they have shown that they can work well, with multiple studios. I think that track is more likely to be what they’ll use in the future. They are extremely calculating.” More

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      The Best Movies and TV Shows Streaming in October: ‘Loki,’ ‘Goosebumps’ and More

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      Here’s the best of what’s coming to Amazon, Max, Apple TV+ and others.Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of October’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘Totally Killer’Starts streaming: Oct. 6The offbeat horror-comedy “Totally Killer” is a 1980s-style slasher film with a science-fiction twist. Kiernan Shipka stars as Jamie, a rebellious teenager who has lived her whole life in a small town that was the site of an infamous string of unsolved murders in 1987. When the masked killer — or perhaps a copycat — reappears and slays Jamie’s mother, Pam (Julie Bowen), Jamie travels back in time to 1987 to stop the original spree. While trying to figure out the identity of a knife-wielding maniac, the heroine handles the culture-clash of being a 2020s high school kid stranded in a clique-dominated, politically incorrect era.Also arriving:Oct. 3“Make Me Scream”Oct. 6“Desperately Seeking Soulmate: Escaping Twin Flames Universe”Oct. 10“Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe”Oct. 11“Awareness”“The Greatest Show Never Made”Oct. 13“The Burial”“Everybody Loves Diamonds”Oct. 20“Bosch: Legacy” Season 2“Upload” Season 3Oct. 24“Hot Potato: The Story of the Wiggles”“Zainab Johnson: Hijabs Off”Oct. 26“Sebastian Fitzek’s Therapy”Oct. 27“The Girl Who Killed Her Parents: The Confession”Brie Larson in “Lessons in Chemistry.”Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘Lessons in Chemistry’Starts streaming: Oct. 13Based on a Bonnie Garmus novel, this mini-series stars Brie Larson as Elizabeth Zott, a talented chemist who struggles to be taken seriously in the sexist 1950s scientific community. When her brazen defiance of her lab’s rules — coupled with an unwillingness to be subservient and girlie — gets her fired, Elizabeth reinvents herself as the host of a science-focused TV cooking show. “Lessons in Chemistry” covers a decade in the heroine’s life, balancing her rise to fame with her early struggles, while also following her brilliant, eccentric colleague and love interest Calvin Evans (Lewis Pullman). A combination of “Mad Men” and “Julia” — with a little bit of “Oppenheimer” mixed in — the series is a portrait of smart, independent people bucking the conformity of their times.Also arriving:Oct. 20“The Pigeon Tunnel”“Shape Island: Creepy Cave Crawl”Oct. 27“The Enfield Poltergeist”“Curses!” Season 1New to Disney+‘Loki’ Season 2Starts streaming: Oct. 5The Marvel Cinematic Universe has lately been all about the multiverse, with movies and TV series offering alternate versions of the classic Marvel characters living in parallel realities. Season 1 of “Loki” got that ball rolling, with a creative and mind-bending story about the roguish Norse deity running afoul of the timeline watchdogs in the Time Variance Authority. For Season 2, Tom Hiddleston returns as Loki and Owen Wilson is back as the frequently flustered TVA agent Mobius M. Mobius. Because of the proliferation of new multiverses unleashed in the Season 1 finale, many of the show’s characters find themselves subtly altered and stuck in other worlds, necessitating another trip through time, space and dimensions for these unlikely heroes.Also arriving:Oct. 2“Mickey and Friends Trick or Treats”Oct. 11“4EVER”Oct. 13“Goosebumps” Season 1Oct. 25“Primal Survivor: Extreme African Safari”Oct. 27“LEGO Marvel Avengers: Code Red”Zack Morris in “Goosebumps.”David Astorga/DisneyNew to Hulu‘Goosebumps’ Season 1Starts streaming: Oct. 13R.L. Stine’s perennially popular “Goosebumps” young adult horror novels get a new television adaptation, although unlike the original 1990s anthology TV series, this latest version (available on Hulu and Disney+) features concepts from Stine’s books inserted into a larger serialized story, with a single cast. Justin Long plays Nathan Bratt, the new high school English teacher in a quaint small town, as well as the new owner of a spooky old house that the local teenagers like to use for their parties. Before Mr. Bratt chases the kids away from their annual Halloween bash, five of them encounter haunted objects that change their lives and put the community in danger.Also arriving:Oct. 1“Ash vs. Evil Dead” Season 1-3“Crazy Fun Park”“Stephen King’s Rose Red”Oct. 2“Appendage”“Fright Crewe” Season 1Oct. 5“The Boogeyman”Oct. 6“Bobi Wine: The People’s President”“Undead Unlock”Oct. 9“The Mill”Oct. 10“Moonlighting” Seasons 1-5Oct. 11“Nada” Season 1Oct. 12“Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House”Oct. 13“Nocebo”Oct. 14“Empire of Light”Oct. 15“Slotherhouse”Oct. 18“Living for the Dead” Season 1Oct. 20“Cobweb”Oct. 26“American Horror Stories” Season 3Oct. 27“Explorer: Lake of Fire”“Shoresy” Season 2Rhys Darby in Season 1 of “Our Flag Means Death.”HBO MaxNew to Max‘Our Flag Means Death’ Season 2Starts streaming: Oct. 5The first season of “Our Flag Means Death” arrived without a lot of fanfare. Initially, the show looked to be just a mild-mannered pirate parody, about a ship full of misfit outlaws led by the inept captain Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby). But as the season rolled on — and as Stede’s rivalry and romance with the notorious Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) became more central to the plot — the series’ creator David Jenkins began focusing more on piracy as a haven for people who yearn to live outside the mainstream. Season 1 ended on a cliffhanger, with Stede’s crew stranded on a deserted island and Blackbeard determined to get back to being mean. Fans have been eager ever since to learn how these twists will affect one of TV’s sweetest love stories.‘The Gilded Age’ Season 2Starts streaming: Oct. 29The “Downton Abbey” creator Julian Fellowes brings his uncommon knack for energetic historical melodrama to “The Gilded Age,” a lavishly decorated and irresistibly entertaining look at high society in 1880s New York City. Carrie Coon is superb as a shrewd social climber, married to a nouveau-riche tycoon (Morgan Spector) whose ruthless business tactics irritate the old money types. The rest of the cast includes Louisa Jacobson as a restless young woman living with her eccentric, judgmental aunts (Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon) and Denée Benton as an aspiring writer defying the era’s racist biases. Season 2 will continue Fellowes’s fascination with a pivotal era in American culture, when the upper-crust considered whether an ascendant democracy should still be following Europe’s unwritten rules of etiquette.Also arriving:Oct. 1“The Ringleader: The Case of the Bling Ring”Oct. 8“Last Stop Larrimah”Oct. 12“Doom Patrol” Season 4Oct. 19“Peter and the Wolf”“Scavengers Reign”Oct. 22“AKA Mr. Chow”Oct. 23“30 Coins” Season 2Jack Cutmore-Scott, left, as Freddy Crane and Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane in “Frasier.”Paramount+New to Paramount+ with Showtime‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’Starts streaming: Oct. 6The final film from William Friedkin is both an adaptation of Herman Wouk’s provocative 1953 play “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial” (updated to modern times by Friedkin, who wrote the screenplay) and a summation of the director’s career-long fascination with the line between legal authority and raw power, as seen in his classic films “The French Connection” and “To Live and Die in L.A.” Jason Clarke plays Lieutenant Barney Greenwald, a Navy lawyer defending Lt. Stephen Maryk, who defied orders and relieved his commanding officer Lt. Cmdr. Phillip Queeg (Kiefer Sutherland) of duty during a storm. Though mostly confined to one courtroom set, the movie is a thrilling actors’ showcase; and as with the play, it toys with the audience’s sympathies, raising questions about how justice is properly served in a case involving the rigid military chain of command.‘Frasier’ Season 1Starts streaming: Oct. 12Kelsey Grammer returns to his most famous role, in a sequel series that surrounds the fussy psychiatrist Frasier Crane with a mostly new cast of characters. Crane moves back to Boston from Seattle and gets involved in the lives of his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), and his nephew, David (Anders Keith). Freddy has turned out a lot like Frasier’s father, Martin — rugged and unpretentious — while David has the same dry wit and nervous energy as Frasier’s brother, Niles. Like the old “Frasier,” this new one traffics in farce, with the comedy driven by misunderstandings and personality clashes.‘Fellow Travelers’Starts streaming: Oct. 27This historical romance tells a story that stretches from the 1950s to the ’80s, tracing a love affair between two political consultants whose lives are affected by the changing times. Matt Bomer plays Hawkins Fuller, a savvy, politically flexible congressional aide who has a fling with Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey), a right-wing speechwriter who admires Joseph McCarthy. Their relationship stretches across decades, through the more permissive ’60s and ’70s and into the conservative revival of the Reagan era. Adapted by the Oscar-nominated “Philadelphia” screenwriter Ron Nyswaner from a Thomas Mallon novel, “Fellow Travelers” is dotted with real-life historical figures and explicitly erotic sex scenes, illustrating how basic human needs can be undone by political expediency.Also arriving:Oct. 5“Bargain”“Monster High 2”Oct. 6“Pet Sematary: Bloodlines”Oct. 10“Painkiller: The Tylenol Murders”Oct. 16“Vindicta”Oct. 17“Crush”Oct. 24“Milli Vanilli”New to Peacock‘John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams’Starts streaming: Oct. 13The influential genre filmmaker and composer John Carpenter lends his name, his music and — for one episode — his directing talents to this hybrid anthology series, which combines true crime and horror. Each episode is anchored by interviews with ordinary people who experienced something extraordinary, encountering real evil in the form of the creeps, the killers and the unexplained phenomena in their seemingly placid neighborhoods. The interviews provide the basic details for these tales; and then the bulk of each “Suburban Screams” episode consists of lengthy re-enactments that have the look and feel of an ’80s slasher movie, as though Carpenter’s “Halloween” were a documentary.Also arriving:Oct. 12“Superbuns” Season 1Oct. 19“Wolf Like Me” Season 2Oct. 20“Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken”Oct. 24“Krishnas: Gurus. Karma. Murder.”Oct. 27“Five Nights at Freddy’s”“L’il Stompers” Season 1 More

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      ‘The Changeling’ Review: Bye Bye Baby

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      LaKeith Stanfield stars in a dark modern fairy tale about a father who doesn’t listen when his wife has doubts about who (or what) is in the crib.A changeling is what a fairy or demon or troll leaves behind when it kidnaps a human baby. Take your eye off your newborn for just a second and you might find yourself raising a ravenous little monster that is not the one you gave birth to.“The Changeling” on Apple TV+ is about what happens when a mother comes to believe, perhaps correctly, that the tiny thing she is caring for is no longer her baby. Fittingly, the series is a kind of changeling itself: a pale echo of the 2017 novel by Victor LaValle on which it is based.The spotty track record for adaptations of books in the peak-TV era is a dead horse that I’ve beaten before. But it’s an inescapable subject. The advent of short, bingeable seasons and, until the money really runs out, the increased demand for shows has brought whole libraries to the screen.“The Changeling,” which is halfway through its eight-episode season, is a stark example of how out of sync the rhythms of good fiction can be with the demands of television. At the same time, it demonstrates the ways in which appealing performers and some visual style can keep you at least partly interested even when the story wanders.LaValle’s novel is a contemporary fairy tale, and it can feel deceptively light and simple on the page, but the history it relates is dark and soaked in despair. Like the Brothers Grimm, he uses his storytelling gifts to acclimate us to the horror, moving the narrative along so smoothly and propulsively that our nerves hover in a state of suspended agitation.The parents whose baby may or may not be human are Emma Valentine, a librarian, and Apollo Kagwa, a freelance book dealer who at first gives no credence to Emma’s suspicions. LaValle uses this framework to dig deeply into the insecurities of parents in the social-media age; at the same time he constructs a casual, street-level epic of New York City struggle and adventure that ranges from Apollo and Emma’s Washington Heights neighborhood to magically enhanced locations in the East River and the forests of Queens.Kelly Marcel, best known as the screenwriter of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” created and wrote the adaptation of “The Changeling,” and she seems to have been tugged in various directions: by a desire to pull viewers in quickly, by a need to stretch out the story (the season covers about two-thirds of the novel) and perhaps by a simple impulse to do something different.So LaValle’s eminently coherent, resolutely chronological story is artily fractured, and the current TV penchant for unexplained, repetitive flashbacks is indulged to a numbing degree. Unwilling to let the story build, Marcel pulls out elements of mystery and revelations about Apollo’s and Emma’s pasts that LaValle saved for key moments and moves them forward in ways that take away the story’s shape. (To help us navigate, she uses passages from the book as narration, which are read by LaValle.)Clark Backo plays a mother who suspects something is amiss with her child.Apple TV+More defensible, but not always successful, are the ways in which she expands the roles of Emma and of Lillian, Apollo’s mother. (LaValle’s novel is centered on Apollo and on the quest he has to undertake after horrific events beset his family.) More screen time for Clark Backo, as Emma, and for Alexis Louder and Adina Porter, as Lillian at different ages, is a good thing; and some new scenes that expand on Emma’s warrior mentality are well done.It all goes wrong for Marcel, though, in a wholly invented late-season episode designed as a showcase for Porter. A prime example of the inadvisability of the trend toward stand-alone “bottle episodes,” it is a magical-realist dream sequence set inside a fleabag hotel that, for the viewer, meticulously recreates the feeling of being trapped in your seat at an excruciating downtown play.LaKeith Stanfield, who is an executive producer of the series, soldiers bravely as Apollo. But Marcel has changed the valence of the character, making him more of a victimized Freudian basket case and less of the barbed egoist he was in the book; this flattens out Apollo’s emotional arc and makes him less interesting, and Stanfield’s performance is uncharacteristically bland. Marcel does a better job with one of LaValle’s best inventions, Apollo’s acerbic fellow book dealer Patrice, and Malcolm Barrett plays him with a sly energy that draws you to him whenever he’s onscreen.You can also perk up during the moments when “The Changeling” remembers that it’s a fairy tale, and the directors — including Dana Gonzales, Melina Matsoukas, Solvan Naim and Jonathan van Tulleken — give a little sparkle to a nighttime boat ride on the East River or a journey through abandoned subway tunnels.And for some of us, there’s a pleasure threaded through the series that isn’t often found on TV, even in literary adaptations: frequent depictions of the handling, reading, hoarding, buying and selling of books, serving as both a reinforcement of the story’s fairy tale underpinnings and as guiltless gratification for the bibliophile. That’s one aspect of the novel that didn’t get thrown out with the bath water. More

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      TV Shows and Movies Streaming in September 2023: ‘The Wheel of Time,’ ‘Gen V’ and More

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      Spinoffs and chillers abound in a month filled with tons of new television. Here’s the best of what’s coming to Amazon, Max, Apple TV+ and others. Every month, streaming services add movies and TV shows to its library. Here are our picks for some of September’s most promising new titles. (Note: Streaming services occasionally change schedules without giving notice. For more recommendations on what to stream, sign up for our Watching newsletter here.)New to Amazon Prime Video‘The Wheel of Time’ Season 2Started streaming: Sept. 1Season 1 of this handsome-looking fantasy series introduced some of the major characters and concepts from the first book of the novelist Robert Jordan’s hefty “The Wheel of Time” saga. Season 2 adapts parts of the second and third books — “The Great Hunt” and “The Dragon Reborn” — and continues moving the pieces into place for the grand apocalyptic battle prophesied at the start of the story. Rosamund Pike returns as the mystic Moiraine, who is helping a group of young people escape the shadowy forces pursuing them. Josha Stradowski plays Rand al’Thor, who may be his land’s last best hope to stand up against the Dark One and his minions — or may be the one to usher in a new age of chaos.‘Neighbours: A New Chapter’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 18The original run of the soap opera “Neighbours” began in 1985 and concluded in 2022 after 38 seasons and nearly 9,000 22-minute episodes. During that time, the show’s melodramatic tales of suburban Melbourne life were seen around the world and introduced viewers to future stars like Natalie Imbruglia, Kylie Minogue, Radha Mitchell, Guy Pearce and Margot Robbie. Now Amazon Studios and Fremantle Australia are bringing the series back, along with some of the old cast (including Pearce), who join an array of new characters. Plans are to run 200 episodes a year for the next two years on Amazon’s ad-supported, free-to-stream Freevee service, where viewers can also watch the older episodes, giving Americans a chance to immerse themselves in these Australians’ love affairs and personal crises.‘Gen V’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 29A spinoff of the adults-only superhero satire “The Boys,” this action-dramedy series is set at a special school for young crime fighters, where the students engage in the same kinds of cliques, rivalries and romances that happen in any normal school but with the constant threat that super powers make every conflict more dangerous. A few of the adult characters from “The Boys” will drop in on the new show (which has a creative team drawn from some of that show’s writers and producers); but the focus here is on the kids, who have a lot in common with classic comic book super teams like the X-Men and the Teen Titans. Expect plenty of irreverence and dark humor, along with some sly takedowns of familiar superhero mythology.Also arriving:Sept. 1“God. Family. Football.”Sept. 5“One Shot: Overtime Elite”Sept. 8“Sitting in Bars with Cake”Sept. 12“Kelce”Sept. 15“A Million Miles Away”“Wilderness” Season 1“Written in the Stars” Season 1Sept. 22“Cassandro”Sept. 22“The Fake Sheikh”Norman Reedus in the latest “Walking Dead” spinoff, “The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon.”Emmanuel Guimier/AMCNew to AMC+‘The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 10Like “The Walking Dead: Dead City” earlier this year, the latest entry in the long-running, ever-expanding “Walking Dead” franchise takes one of the most popular characters from the show’s original run and plops him in another part of the world. Norman Reedus reprises his role as Daryl Dixon, a talented marksman and tracker who had to overcome his loner tendencies to become a vital part of an embattled postapocalyptic community in the American southeast. In this new series, Daryl takes his talents to France, where he allies with a tough nun (Clémence Poésy) who shows him the unique ways that continental Europe handled the zombie outbreak and helps him to figure out who he can trust.Also arriving:Sept. 1“Perpetrator”Sept. 8“Blood Flower”Sept. 10“Ride With Norman Reedus” Season 6Sept. 15“Elevator Game”Sept. 20“Thick Skin”Sept. 22“The Angry Black Girl and Her Mother”Sept. 29“Nightmare”LaKeith Stanfield in a scene from “The Changeling,” based on the Victor LaValle novel.Apple TV+New to Apple TV+‘The Changeling’Starts streaming: Sept. 8Like the Victor LaValle novel that inspired it, the supernatural horror series “The Changeling” combines everyday drama with terrifying nightmares, in a story that sprawls across multiple generations. LaKeith Stanfield plays Apollo, a shy book dealer who is haunted by memories of the father he barely knew. He is also attracted to a vibrant but eccentric woman named Emmy (Clark Backo), whom he eventually marries. The show’s creator and writer, Kelly Marcel, shifts the narrative focus freely among different characters and different eras, as a crisis with Emmy and their newborn child drives Apollo to confront his troubled family history. In doing so, he finds that his past is shrouded in the kind of wondrous darkness common to fairy tales, and he is challenged to untangle fantasy from fact in an enchanted version of New York City.‘The Morning Show’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 13One of Apple TV+’s flagship series returns for a third season of punchy boardroom drama, set in the modern TV news business. The show is still powered by its two charismatic leads: Jennifer Aniston as the veteran morning show anchor Alex Levy and Reese Witherspoon as Bradley Jackson, a feisty hard news reporter who has become Alex’s co-host. Billy Crudup and Mark Duplass play two of the behind-the-camera bosses who sometimes make morally questionable choices. This season they are joined by Jon Hamm as a cocky tech billionaire who might be able improve their network’s cash-flow. Although “The Morning Show” started as a ripped-from-the-headlines look at how the #MeToo era has upended the male-dominated media, the series has since opened to encompass other hot-button contemporary issues, which in Season 3 include cyberattacks and corporate blackmail.Also arriving:Sept. 20“The Super Models”Sept. 22“Still Up”Sept. 29“Flora and Son”Sinclair Daniel, left, and Ashleigh Murray in a scene from “The Other Black Girl.”HuluNew to Hulu‘The Other Black Girl’ Season 1Starts streaming: Sept. 13Part wry social commentary and part intense mystery-thriller, “The Other Black Girl” examines the racial and gender dynamics of the New York publishing industry. Sinclair Daniel plays Nella, an aspiring assistant editor who befriends Hazel (Ashleigh Murray), her publishing house’s latest hire and the only other Black person in her department. When Hazel’s collegial advice starts derailing Nella’s career — around the same time that Nella starts experiencing some unnerving paranormal activity around the office — she begins looking into her new friend’s past and the history of their employers. Adapted from a best-selling Zakiya Dalila Harris novel, this show finds the humor and the anxiety inherent in the life of a woman who is struggling to stand out in a tough business without losing her identity.Also arriving:Sept. 6“Never Let Him Go”Sept. 13“Welcome to Wrexham” Season 2Sept. 14“Dragons: The Nine Realms” Season 7Sept. 20“American Horror Story: Delicate” Part 1Sept. 22“No One Will Save You”Sept. 27“Love in Fairhope” Season 1Nikesh Patel and Rose Matafeo in scene from Season 3 of the Max series “Starstruck.”Mark Johnson/MaxNew to Max‘Starstruck’ Season 3Starts streaming: Sept. 28This charming romantic comedy is one of the streaming era’s hidden gems, and it is ripe for discovery now that the fall TV schedule has been thinned out by the actors’ and writers’ strikes. Through its first two seasons, “Starstruck” followed the unlikely on-again/off-again love affair between Jessie (Rose Matafeo), a young New Zealander struggling to make ends meet in London, and Tom (Nikesh Patel), an A-list movie star who is smitten with her. Season 3 has the couple going their separate ways but still frequently and awkwardly crossing paths. The show’s short, breezy episodes capture how the “getting to know you” phase of romance can be equal parts exciting and difficult, especially when one of the people involved is rich and famous.Also arriving:Sept. 2“The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart”Sept. 13“Donyale Luna: Supermodel”Sept. 21“Young Love” Season 1A scene from the Season 4 premiere of “Star Trek: Lower Decks,” which centers on the underlings of a starship.Paramount+New to Paramount+ With Showtime‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ Season 4Starts streaming: Sept. 7“Star Trek” fans who are still buzzing from the excellent, recently completed second season of “Strange New Worlds” should roll those warm feelings over to the fourth season of the animated “Lower Decks,” which has established its place as one of the best of the modern “Star Trek” shows. Like “Strange New Worlds,” “Lower Decks” balances old-fashioned “interstellar adventure of the week” stories with involved subplots and rich character development. This cute-looking cartoon is fundamentally comic — following the goofy mishaps of a bunch of Starfleet’s least vital employees — but its writers and animators respect the franchise’s lore enough to deliver cleverly plotted, action-packed episodes, season after season.Also arriving:Sept. 8“Dreaming Whilst Black”Sept. 12“Football Must Go On”Sept. 17“The Gold”Sept. 18“Superpower”Sept. 22“Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court”Sept. 26“72 Seconds”Colin Woodell as Winston Scott in a scene from “The Continental: From the World of John Wick.”Katalin Vermes/Starz EntertainmentNew to Peacock‘The Continental: From the World of John Wick’Starts streaming: Sept. 22Fans of the first “John Wick” movie will always remember the moment when its weary hit man hero walked into a strange, assassin-friendly hotel called the Continental and was reminded of its arcane codes of behavior. Suddenly a movie that had previously seemed like a low-stakes underworld revenge thriller opened up into something more fantastical and globe spanning, with a dense mythology. The TV mini-series “The Continental: From the World of John Wick” is set in the 1970s and stars Mel Gibson as Cormac, the hotel’s New York manager at that time. Colin Woodell plays a young version of the franchise’s Winston Scott, who is tasked by Cormac to solve a family problem that may threaten the viability of this super secret criminal hideaway.Also arriving:Sept. 4“Chucky” Season 2Sept. 28“Dino Pops” Season 1 More

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      In ‘Invasion,’ Simon Kinberg Adds Touchy-Feely to Creepy-Crawly

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      The series co-creator says the real ticking clock of the alien-invasion show, back this month, is “Can we make connections with other people in time?”This interview includes spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of “Invasion.”The Apple TV+ series “Invasion” is about aliens attacking Earth, but Season 1, which arrived almost two years ago, took some time getting to … you know, the invasion. It was fine and dandy to meet a bunch of people around the world as they faced weird happenings, but where were the creatures, the cool spaceships, the explosions?“I was certainly conscious that it wasn’t going to be like a lot of other alien-invasion films and television shows that are sort of rock ’em, sock ’em,” Simon Kinberg, the series co-creator (with David Weil) and showrunner, said recently.Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna) is given a special task in Season 2. Kinberg described the character as one of the “people in our midst that are sort of vibrating at a different frequency.”Apple TV+To fine-tune the show’s distinctive mood, he reached back to his experience as a producer on “Logan,” the unexpectedly melancholy film that concluded the Wolverine trilogy in 2017.“We really slowed that movie down and focused it on drama and relationship,” Kinberg said. “While they weren’t used to the pacing of a movie like ‘Logan,’ audiences were moved and emotionally engaged — with also action and superpowers, the same way that ‘Invasion’ has supernatural mystery.”Season 2, which premiered last week, picks up four months after Season 1 ended, and Earth is in a bad way. Deadly ink-black creatures are rampaging, and familiar characters are engulfed in the apocalyptic chaos. The brainiac Mitsuki (Shioli Kutsuna), for example, is getting over her grief by engaging in guerrilla warfare against the aliens. In that same span, the well-to-do homemaker Aneesha (Golshifteh Farahani) has further accelerated her transformation into a ruthless survivor.Golshifteh Farahani plays the formerly well-to-do homemaker Aneesha, who has morphed into a ruthless survivor since the alien invasion.Apple TV+While the action has amped up, the new season also explores a quasi-psychedelic dimension, most spectacularly after Mitsuki is whisked to the wreckage of a spacecraft downed in Season 1. There, an egomaniacal entrepreneur (Shane Zaza) leads a team that is trying to communicate with a nebulous extraterrestrial presence.“You realize that it’s not just the war, but it’s also trying to understand the mechanics of the thinking of this alien,” Alik Sakharov, who directed four episodes of the new season, including the premiere, said in a video chat.A huge science-fiction fan, with “Deadpool,” “The Martian” and several Marvel Cinematic Universe entries on his résumé, Kinberg, 50, spoke in a video call from his home in Los Angeles about his preference for an unconventional approach to sci-fi in the show. He also teased a connection between that mysterious black shard and a certain Jedi weapon. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The alien-invasion subgenre tends to offer either action-driven, “War of the Worlds”-type stories or more philosophical narratives like “Arrival” or “Contact.” Why did you try to combine both approaches in the show?What was exciting to me was creating a new type of tonal template for a science-fiction show, and specifically an alien-invasion story, where you are combining something really epic with something really intimate, something that’s very supernatural and science fiction with something that’s very human and dramatic. I actually pitched the show to Apple as “War of the Worlds” combined with [Alejandro González Iñárritu’s] movie “Babel.” So as you said, “Arrival,” “Contact” and, for me, “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was a huge influence — those are very grounded, much smaller. But I also love telling stories on a big scale, having worked on superhero movies, the “Star Wars” universe, and I wondered what would happen if you could combine the two of them.In Season 1, the aliens crawling over Earth were lethal shape-shifting beasties. That was bad enough, but they are even worse now.Yeah, we called them the worker aliens in Season 1. We see a few of them in Season 2, and they are evolved or enhanced into the hunter-killer aliens. They are organic, they are bioengineered — so they’re both organic and inorganic.What Kinberg called “the worker aliens” are bioengineered, he explained, “both organic and inorganic.”Apple TV+Do they have a life cycle like the Xenomorph from “Alien”? I’m sorry, I’m getting really nerdy here.No, I love getting nerdy! [Laughs.] They don’t have a life cycle, but they’re able to be killed. We spend a lot of time in the writers’ room getting as nerdy as possible and trying to build the rules because we have lots of powers this season in terms of what the characters are able to do, and we want to be really careful.At the end of Season 1, we’re told that the aliens are “terraforming.” So they’re involved in some big project?Absolutely. They’re not here to simply kill us — killing us is a byproduct of just wanting our land. It is like most invasions for territory, whether it’s humans invading other humans or aliens invading humans. They’re invading our planet for resources, and they’re just clearing the way so they can have it.Mitsuki, Caspar (Billy Barratt) and Luke (Azhy Robertson) all have a special relationship with the aliens. Why these three?I remember reading or hearing from people that they didn’t know why these different parallel stories were being told in Season 1, that it felt arbitrary. Season 2 starts to really show what the connections are between these people. We chose them because they are special or touched. I really believe that some people do have E.S.P., some people have different kinds of, let’s call them powers. There would be people in our midst that are sort of vibrating at a different frequency — and it would be the frequency that the aliens are operating on.Why are you making the main characters gradually gravitate toward each other?I think that the core of the show is “Can we make connections with other people in time?” The real ticking clock of the show for me isn’t “Are we going to develop weapons that are strong enough to kill the aliens?” That’s not really what the show is about.Is that why the story plays off the concept of the hive mind?The idea is that, ultimately, our advantage as humans is that we’re able to create community — which you can call a hive mind — whether it’s the internet or cheering for the same sports team or nationalism. You have people that may share a political cause or a love for something or a love for one another as a family. Within that, you have the thing that we inherently bring to any situation, which is our individually unique perspective. And I think that type of individual heroism, when combined with other people, is what makes us able to survive, let alone hopefully overcome a technologically superior race.In Season 1, Aneesha and her children find a mysterious black alien shard that, of course, surfaces again in Season 2. What can you tell us about it?The shard is something really powerful. I really grew up a “Star Wars” kid, and I thought about the kyber crystals that make the lightsabers. I was always fascinated about where they came from, and so the shard is my sort of kyber crystal for the show.What do you want viewers to get out of “Invasion” as Season 2 gets underway?It has the peanut butter and jelly that are my favorite elements of my favorite science fiction: You really get to go on a big ride with people you care about. More