Netflix Previews Del Toro's Frankenstein and Hints at Stranger Things Spinoffs
WWE stars mixed with John Mulaney, Tina Fey, Ben Affleck and Squid Game guards at a Netflix event.
I attended the “Next on Netflix Preview Event” Tuesday morning at the Egyptian theater in Hollywood, where the streaming giant previewed what they’ve got coming in the year ahead. Some projects got just a quick name drop or mention — as a nod to the upcoming third Knives Out film, Wake Up Dead Man, Benoit Blanc’s name could be glimpsed for a second in the fun promo video, seen below, where a woman finds herself in various Netflix series realms — while others got a big spotlight, complete with special guests introduced by Netflix’s Chief Content Officer, Bela Bajaria.
The event was structured like the TV network Upfronts I used to attend in New York, with some very notable names rapidly, and usually briefly, appearing on stage to introduce footage, accompanied by a lot of requisite hype about the company and their programming (yes, the oh-so polarizing Emilia Pérez’s recent slew of Oscar nominations was celebrated).
A lot of that footage was impressive, though Netflix feels like they’re in more of a transitionary era than usual, as several of their most high profile series — including Stranger Things, Squid Game, Cobra Kai, and You — all come to an end in 2025. What will replace them and will any find the same level of success? That’s hard to say, since you never know when something like Squid Game will come out of left field and become a genuine global sensation in the way that series did.
But here’s nine takeaways from the event.
It’s Fun to See WWE Stars in the Netflix World
I mean, just look at the top of the page… CM Punk is standing next to Ben Affleck and Tina Fey! Rhea Ripley is standing next to John Mulaney! It’s not unusual to see WWE stars mingle with or even sometimes appear in films with big names from outside wrestling, but moving WWE RAW to Netflix is opening up the crossover potential in a much bigger way. Punk and Rhea opened the show, walking onstage to “Cult of Personality,” with Rhea stating “One of the coolest things about working with Netflix is how they bring so many different worlds together.”
At the breakfast reception following the presentation, I spoke to both Rhea and Punk and both agreed it would be fun if Netflix did the kind of cross-promotion USA used to do, where WWE talent would guest star on USA series like Psych. Just imagine seeing, say, Liv Morgan as Nevermore Academy alumni on Wednesday or Cody Rhodes as a client on The Lincoln Lawyer. The possibilities are endless, dang it!
More Stranger Things Spinoffs Are Coming
Though Netflix officially confirmed a Stranger Things animated series was happening awhile back, at the preview event, the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, heavily implied other projects are in the works - though they wouldn’t get specific on them just yet.
While hyping up the Stranger Things stage play in London — soon to make its Broadway debut — they teased what’s beyond, with Matt Duffer starting, “There are more Stranger Things stories to tell and in the works. It’s a bit early at this point to talk about them, but we’re deeply involved in every one — it’s very important to us that anything with the Stranger Things name on it is of the highest quality and not repetitive — that it has a reason to exist and always blazes its own path. And also, it needs to basically just be... awesome. Or we need to think it’s awesome. And there are a lot of what we think are awesome things in the pipeline.”.
A video was shown for Stranger Things Season 5 mainly comprised of behind the scenes footage of the cast and crew, though it looked like a handful of actual in-show shots were included. A glimpse of a locker with “Hellfire lives” scrawled inside it let us know they weren’t going to let the spirit the beloved Eddie Munson be forgotten.
Del Toro’s Frankenstein Looks as Awesome as You’d Hope
Though he was feeling under the weather and couldn’t be there in person, Guillermo del Toro sent a recorded message from his home, which is absolutely packed with amazing Frankenstein memorabilia, including multiple full size statues of actors from the famous 1931 Universal Boris Karloff version and its 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. As del Toro deadpanned, while showing us his collection, “Some people may even think I am a little bit obsessed with Frankenstein.”
He noted doing his own version of the story was something he’d been trying to accomplish since his career began, explaining, “Over the decades, the character has fused with my soul in a way that it has become an autobiography. It doesn’t get more personal than this.”
The footage we were shown looked fantastic, with Oscar Isaac’s longhaired, hat-adorned Victor Frankenstein feeling like a force of nature, marching into rooms as he declares his intention to restore life to the dead - even as we see the skepticism of other’s, including Mia Goth’s character. When Victor gets the body parts he needs from corpses, it’s gruesome and visceral, as he works in a laboratory with vibrant, retro-future lights to power his equipment.
As for the Monster, Jacob Elordi’s natural height feels even more accentuated and his Monster has long hair like his creator, while sporting a long, flowing coat. We see him track Victor to the North Pole, where the novel’s framing device takes place - declaring to a terrified Captain Walton “My maker told his tale. Now I will tell mine.”
Affleck and Damon’s Latest Team-Up Looks Great
Yep, Matt and Ben are at it again, in what looks to be a gripping crime thriller. RIP stars the duo as Miami-based cops who stumble onto millions of dollars hidden in a house and then scheme, along with a handful of others, to keep the money for themselves. It comes from director Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces, The A-Team) and the footage we got looked very compelling.
Affleck, who intro’d the footage, had high praise for Carnahan, saying “He really outdid himself and it’s really spectacular. He co-wrote it, he directed it and he really wanted to make this a genre classic like Seven or The French Connection. It’s a really fun, engaging ride that keeps you guessing.”
The solid hook of the film was backed by the trailer we were shown, as we see these cops impulsively make the decision to keep the money they’ve found - and then the tension increasing as the danger of their secret being revealed expands.
Jude Law and Jason Bateman as Brothers Looks Promising
The idea of Jude Law and Jason Bateman playing brothers seems odd at first, but the footage from their new series, Black Rabbit, feels like it has potential. Law plays the guy with everything going for him, Bateman the perpetual troublemaker who returns to his life in the midst of what looks like some serious, criminal-connected trouble - if you’ve seen recent photos of Bateman sporting very long hair and a beard, it’s for this role. The two actors appeared to have some good, offbeat energy together, with their different demeanors playing into the brothers’ dynamic.
The Black Rabbit footage was shown back to back with a trailer for the star-studded Zero Day, starring Robert De Niro as the former president of the United States - who also seems to now be personally interrogating a prisoner and threatening his loved ones after 3,402 died in a cyber attack known as Zero Day. Despite the presence of a ridiculously talented crop of actors like Jesse Plemons, Joan Allen, Connie Britton, and Angela Bassett, this one just looked okay from this early footage. Though perhaps the very 1990s “based on a book a lot of dads read on airplanes” thriller vibe it exudes will work in its favor.
Tina Fey Hearts Alan Alda
Tina Fey appeared to talk about her upcoming eight-episode series, The Four Seasons, which is based on a 1981 movie that was written, directed by and starring Alan Alda that Fey adored from the moment she saw it as a kid. As Fey described it, “It has a very simple premise. It follows a group of old friends — three couples — over four vacations. We never see them at home. We never see them at work — we just see how their lives change over a year by hanging out with them on vacation. No one is a vampire and— spoiler alert— there are zero murders.”
Fey said she got Alda’s permission to do this remake, with her version reuniting her with 30 Rock writers Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher and starring herself alongside Steve Carell, Will Forte, Kerri Kinney-Silver, Marco Calvani, Erika Henningsen and Colman Domingo. We were shown a brief clip of Fey and Forte (who looks to be playing against type as a normal dude) interrupted by a drunk, giggling Carell. The clip was cute and amusing, though not as hysterical as we know these folks are capable of, though it feels like this show might be far more down to Earth than the heightened likes of 30 Rock or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Squid Games Season 3 Will, Shockingly, Include Games
With its June 27th premiere date announced, a clip was shown from Squid Game’s third and final season. It wasn’t a particularly exciting scene in terms of plot or action, but it did show that there is an upcoming game where the entire group of players is split into two teams, based on which ball — red or blue — they randomly get from a gum ball machine (you can see that machine in the promo video up top).
A notable moment comes when Geum-ja (Kang Ae-sim), and her son Yong-sik, receive different color balls. With Yong-sik looking despondent, Geum-ja tells him, “It’s okay. We don’t even know what the game is.”
The last player to choose is Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), whose entrance into the room gets a lot of attention - indicating this is likely his return to the games after his failed uprising at the end of Season 2. He ends up with a red ball.
John Mulaney Maintains His “Damn Funny” Reputation
After a bit of a test run last year, with the six-night Everybody’s in L.A., John Mulaney will be returning for a 12-week run of his new talk show, now titled Everybody's Live with John Mulaney.
Mulaney appeared for a typically funny appearance, declaring, “We will be live globally with no delay. We will never be relevant. We will never be your source for news. We will always be reckless. Netflix will always provide us with data that we will ignore,” while also adding, “This is a really fun experiment. Not since Harry and Meghan has Netflix given more money to someone without a specific plan.”
Mulaney joked he was doing a talk show on Netflix despite never really wanting one and after Netflix had abandoned earlier attempts at the format, declaring, “We will have a host in a suit taking calls from viewers. It's Netflix's commitment to embracing the 20th century. There is absolutely nothing new about what I'm doing but, by taking a lot of elements other people have already done and doing them out of order, it feels new and that's what's important.”
He then added, “If we can be one-tenth as popular on Netflix as anything from South Korea, I will have the most successful talk show in world history.”
Netflix Remembered They Made The Old Guard 2!
I thought the 2020 Netflix film The Old Guard, starring Charlize Theron, was really fun, standing out from a lot of Netflix’s frequently forgettable action films (other cool exceptions like Extraction and Rebel Ridge aside) with its story of a group of immortal warriors who are mercenaries for hire. A sequel went into production way back in the summer of 2022 and then… little but silence followed. There were reports of reshoots finally occurring this past fall, but whatever the situation was with the film, Netflix at last announced The Old Guard 2 is coming on July 2. However it turns out, I’m just glad this sucker is finally getting released.