Enlarge / Tom Sturridge has snagged the coveted role of Dream, aka Morpheus, in the Netflix adaptation of The Sandman . (credit: DC Comics)

At long last, Netflix has announced several cast members for its hotly anticipated adaptation of Neil Gaiman's award-winning graphic novel series Sandman . As Deadline Hollywood reports , Tom Sturridge ( Being Julia, Pirate Radio ) snagged the coveted role of Morpheus, Lord of the Dreaming, while Game of Thrones alums Gwendoline Christie and Charles Dance will play a gender-swapped Lucifer and the charlatan magician Roderick Burgess, respectively.

(Mild spoilers for the graphic novel series below.)

As we've reported previously , the titular "sandman" is Dream, aka Morpheus, among other names. He is one of seven entities known as the Endless, and he is seeking to set right his past mistakes. The other Endless are Destiny, Destruction, Despair, Desire, Delirium, and Death, portrayed as a perky punk/goth young woman. They became almost as popular as Dream himself (especially Death) and were featured in several spinoff comics.  The series opens when Morpheus, the King of Dreams, escapes from a 70-year imprisonment by an occultist (who actually wanted to capture Dream's sibling Death but trapped the Sandman by mistake).

Apple TV+ has dropped the trailer for the second season of For All Mankind , its science fiction drama about an alternate history where the space race never ended. The series was the linchpin of the Apple TV+ launch in 2019, and proved popular enough with viewers to warrant a second season.

(Some spoilers for the first season below.)

Series creator Ronald D. Moore ( Battlestar Galactica ) has made a point of trying to keep the show reasonably close to reality, despite the science fiction concept, often consulting the original NASA plans for guidance, and incorporating archival footage throughout the season. Moore said the following during a 2019 panel Q&A after an IMAX screening of the first two S1 episodes at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC:

Enlarge / TV stepped in to fill the pandemic-fueled gap in new movie releases with a broad array of entertaining series. (credit: Photo collage by Aurich Lawson)

Warning: This story includes major spoilers for the series finale of The Good Place . Although we’ve otherwise done our best to avoid spoiling anything too major, please note this list includes specific references to The Mandalorian , The Flight Attendant , Lovecraft Country , The Boys S2, Star Trek: Lower Decks , and The Queen's Gambit , among others.

This was the year that going to the movies suddenly became a rare event. As we observed in our roundup of the best films in 2020 , "The pandemic has ransacked reliable sources of new films, like theaters and film festivals. And any number of major titles we may have looked forward to on January 1, 2020 (from Dune to Top Gun ) have instead chosen to push back by at least 12 months." Fortunately, TV was there to pick up the slack and keep pandemic-weary viewers entertained at home with more quality content than ever before—much of it from streaming platforms rather than traditional broadcast television.

It's a trend that has been building for some time, but the streaming wars are now in full swing. Just two broadcast offerings made our year-end list, although CBS' streaming platform, CBS All Access, made its mark with two of its Star Trek franchise programs. Netflix dominates with nine entries, followed by HBO/HBO Max (5), Amazon (3), and Disney+/ESPN+ (2), with Hulu/FX getting a category all its own. Heck, even YouTube gets a nod this year with Philadelphia Sixers Matisse Thybulle's series of videos documenting life in the NBA bubble.

Enlarge / Tokyo residents find themselves trapped in a post-apocalyptic parallel world called Borderland, where they must compete in deadly games to survive. (credit: Netflix)

In the carefree, pre-pandemic Before Times, escape rooms were all the rage as fun group activities, where people had to solve a puzzle or mystery, or complete a series of tasks, in order to escape. Alice in Borderland , a hugely entertaining new Netflix series from Japan, takes that concept to a whole new level, transforming Tokyo into an alternate dimension called "Borderland." Those trapped therein must compete in deadly games to survive, and escape is by no means guaranteed. This is an emotionally intense, addictive series you'll definitely want to binge.

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

As previously reported , the series is based on the Japanese manga by Haro Aso. It has elements of Alice in Wonderland and Ready Player One , with a dash of Lord of the Flies and the 1997 sci-fi horror film, Cube , thrown in for good measure, but it's very much an original vision. The TV adaptation is directed by Shinsuke Sato, best known for 2001's The Princess Blade and last year's Kingdom , and co-written by Haro Aso and Yasuko Kuramitsu. The manga tells the story of Ryōhei Arisu (Arisu can be translated as "Alice"), a bored high schooler who longs for a more exciting life. Arisu's wish is granted during a fireworks celebration: he and his two best friends find themselves in a post-apocalyptic parallel world known as Borderland.

Enlarge / The Expanse returns to Amazon Prime for another epic season. (credit: Amazon Prime)

Amazon Prime's epic science fiction series The Expanse is back for its fifth season. In her review last week, Ars' Tech Policy Reporter Kate Cox called it "the best [season] since its first, a long-awaited high-stakes payoff to several seasons' worth of setup," adding, "if you drifted away from the show during earlier seasons, like something accidentally dropped in microgravity, this new season makes it worth finding a way to come back."

(Some spoilers below, but no major reveals.)

As we've noted previously , The Expanse is based on a series of novels by James S.A. Corey (the pen name for writing team Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), exploring interplanetary tensions that are breaking out all over a Solar System long since colonized by humans—mostly between Earthers, Martians, and "Belters." Part mystery, part political thriller , part classic space opera, The Expanse has earned almost nothing but praise from critics and its devoted fans alike, not just for its gripping storytelling but also its excellent use of accurate physics .

Among the many (many!) tidbits unveiled during Disney's Investor Day was a lengthy teaser trailer for Loki , the Marvel spinoff limited series featuring Tom Hiddleston's charismatic trickster demigod and (adoptive) brother to Thor, last seen in Avengers: Endgame . Marvel Studios had vowed to provide "hefty" budgets for its various limited series, like WandaVision (which also has a new trailer ), and this Loki teaser definitely has the high cinematic production values to show for it.

(Some spoilers below for Avengers: Endgame in particular.)

Marvel Studios announced the development of its various limited series for Disney+ in 2018, all featuring supporting characters from the films who were not given their own standalone films within the MCEU. Details have largely been kept tightly under wraps, but we do know that both Loki and WandaVision will tie into the forthcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness . Fan favorite Loki has always been one of the most multi-layered, psychologically complex characters, so we're keen to see what the limited series has in store for him.

Enlarge / Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy unveiled a slew of forthcoming Star Wars projects at Disney's Investor Day. (credit: Lucasfilm )

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy gave updates on a slew of forthcoming Star Wars film and TV projects at Disney's Investor Day—including a behind-the-scenes teaser for Rogue One -spinoff series Andor, set five years before the events of the 2016 blockbuster film.

"With The Mandalorian on Disney+, we've ushered in an entirely new era for Star Wars ," Kennedy said. "These interconnected shows, along with future stories, will excite new audiences, embrace our most passionate fans, and will culminate in a climactic story event."

(Some spoilers below.)

Fans eagerly awaiting the debut of Zack Snyder's Justice League on HBO Max next year were thrilled to hear that a new trailer was coming today to mark the third anniversary of the theatrical cut's release. They're probably feeling a teensy bit cheated right now, since what dropped was actually an updated black-and-white version of the teaser trailer from the virtual DC FanDome event in August—although the eagle-eyed viewer will spot a few seconds of new footage. But at least Snyder also provided a virtual breakdown of said trailer during a livestreaming event on Vero.

The August trailer had been removed from YouTube earlier this month because of contested music rights issues—the trailer was set to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." Now those issues have been resolved , and Snyder marked the occasion with this latest black-and-white offering, Cohen soundtrack intact. (You can watch the full-color version here.)

Apparently, Snyder's ideal vision for Justice League would be a black-and-white IMAX version. "That, to me, is the most fan-centric, most pure, most Justice League experience, because that’s how I lived with the movie for two years, in black-and-white," he told The Film Junkee in a recent interview.

Enlarge / (l-r) Emma D'Arcy, Nick Frost, and Samson Kanyo star in Truth Seekers . (credit: Amazon Prime)

A lonely broadband installer with a side gig as a ghost hunter and his new partner encounter more supernatural intrigue than they bargained for in Truth Seekers , a new comedy series on Amazon Prime, created by Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, James Serafinowicz, and Nat Saunders. We're fans of Paul, Shaun of the Dead , and the rest of the Three Flavors Cornetto trilogy , so it's nice to see Frost and Pegg back together on screen again. Truth Seekers brings their unique comic sensibility to the topic of paranormal investigation.

Per the official synopsis:

Truth Seekers is a supernatural comedy series about a team of part-time paranormal investigators who team up to uncover and film ghost sightings across the UK, sharing their adventures on an online channel for all to see. However, as they stake out haunted churches, underground bunkers and abandoned hospitals with their array of homemade ghost-detecting gizmos, their supernatural experiences grow more frequent, more terrifying and even deadly, as they begin to uncover a conspiracy that could bring about Armageddon for the entire human race.

Frost plays Gus—a lonely widowed guy with a boring job installing broadband for a company called SMYLE—who moonlights as an amateur paranormal investigator. The titular Truth Seekers is the name of his YouTube channel. Pegg has a somewhat smaller role (in terms of screen time) as Gus' cheerfully exuberant boss, Dave, who sports a positively disastrous wig and seems to be very keen on always maintaining "100 percent coverage." Is he really that gung-ho about customer service, or is there some ulterior motive at SMYLE?