Well no point in delaying it. Hold still and let me RIP OFF THE BAND-AID of yesterday’s TV and film baloney in your mid-week Pop Culture Fix.
+ Well, yesterday was a real axe-murdery pop culture news day. Netflix announced it’s cancelling First Kill. DC announced it’s not even going to release Batgirl, not even on streaming, even though they literally own their own platform. Justin Kroll of Deadline said a rival studio exec called the Batgirl thing “some unprecedented shit.” Warner Brothers, you’ll remember, has also cancelled Naomi and Batwoman. That sure is a lot of Black actress-fronted superhero properties, huh? We’re also losing trans hero/Batgirl’s BFF Alysia Yeoh, who would have been the first trans character in a major superhero movie. Batgirl was literally in the final stages of editing! First Kill was an undisputed ratings success! Un-fucking-real. (We’ve also lost The Wilds and Legends of Tomorrow between seasons, don’t forget.) I thought maybe I’d be less furious about this after I slept on it, but nope!
+ The CW has renewed Good Trouble for a fifth season.
+ Hari Nef will portray Candy Darling in a biopic from Transparent writer Stephanie Kornick.
+ New She-Hulk clip is looking good!
Clearly nailing it 💪💅
Check out this brand new clip from #SheHulk: Attorney At Law, an Original series from Marvel Studios on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/dOskCOyFYN
— Marvel Studios (@MarvelStudios) August 1, 2022
+ Hayley Kiyoko reads thirst tweets.
+ A night out with King Princess.
+ D’Arcy Carden on her queer A League of Their Own bombshell.
+ Hypochondriac filmmaker Addison Heimann on why everything should be queer.
+ Carmen Sandiego should have made me realize I’m bisexual.
+ Nope’s costume designer explains those band T-shirts.
+ House of Dragons exec producer says there will be no on-screen sexual violence. (We’re not sure if the show will have queer characters, but we do know nonbinary actor Emma D’Arcy is a star!)
+ Zoe Saldaña talks about Nichelle Nichols and playing Uhura in the new Star Trek movies.
+ HBO’s The White Lotus will be back in October, hopefully with maintext queer gals this time!
+ Top Chef season 20 is headed to London.
Bless you, Heather, for writing about First Kill. I missed Autostraddle’s input on the series, fandom and hype – and now it’s cancelled and another queer/woc series has become victim of this cruel TV world.
I’m so unhappy about First Kill. It was a bad show, yes, but it was fun, and it had great viewership (despite what Netflix is claiming now). It was at least on par with (if not more popular than) Heartstopper, which got renewed for two seasons.
I’m really upset over The Wilds, though. I didn’t realize how much I wanted more until it got axed. I guess I just assumed a third season was a given due to the favorable reviews, the online engagement, and the viewership. Knowing I’m never going to see Shelby and Toni and Fatin and Leah and the others again is pissing me off.
I assume part of that is that because Heartstopper doesn’t have any special effects or fancy costumes or locations it’s much cheaper to make.
i doubt this. the cgi on first kill was really bad and clearly very low budget. it would not have cost much to make it but Netflix’s model is to greenlight shows in hopes of bringing new audiences and then they cancel them. they also clearly hate lesbians
WB trashing Batgirl just so they can write off most of the production costs on their taxes has gotta be the most disgusting, coldhearted move I’ve seen from a movie studio. This is a huge fuck you to the cast and crew who worked on this production for months just so the studio can save some money. Basically sends a message that they don’t give a single shit about their talent, and I find it laughable that they said they still wanna work w/ Leslie Grace and the co-directors again. It’d make way more sense at this point if those 3 (and hopefully way more) refuse to work w/ WB ever again as long as David Zaslav is still there
The current thought is that the guy who’s responsible for Discovery/Warner Bros is going to fold HBOMax into Discovery+, and that basically all scripted series on HBOMax are going away. That means that Westworld, PLL: Original Sin, and countless others are about to die.
Sure seems like the last decade was studios throwing everything at the wall to see what stuck enough to bring in streaming subscribers, and now we’re heading into an inevitable retraction as streaming money dries up. No amount of content will make me subscribe to more than a couple services for sure! It’s too easy to just buy a month once a year to catch up. The climate is affecting queer and POC stories for sure, but also everything that’s weird or quirky or not mainstream is going to have a hard time. I’m sad, but it feels more like the end of a unsustainable Golden Age rather than a malicious backlash?
Westworld will be fine, that is an HBO Original production.
I’m in a real queer content depression right now. What have we got this year? Heart stopper (eh, sorry) and Crush (yay for queer campy rom com but targeted toward younger audience) and I’m not mentioning killing eve on purpose. But come on! I have an emptiness that needs to be filled!!
For television, we’ve got Paper Girls, Queer as Folk, Minx, Single Drunk Female, and The Legend of Vox Machina. There’s also A League of Their Own and The Sandman coming up.
I haven’t kept up with movies much this year, but I know there’s a lesbian love triangle in Bodies Bodies Bodies, which I am very much looking forward to personally.
To add to OD’s list. What We Do in the Shadows pretty much says all vampires are queer & shows it in some way or another.
Our Flag Means Death too
The Batgirl thing *might* even be colder than shelving the whole 2nd season of Chad on the same day it was supposed to premiere. Hmmm, what does Nasim Pedrad have in common with a lot of the other leads whose projects Discovery is disrespecting?
I don’t know who’s benefiting from this Warner Discovery merger but it’s not the creators and audiences considering damn near every project under their umbrella has gotten the shaft.
Also sends a very shitty message that they’re cancelling Batgirl but they’re still trying to push out that Ezra Miller Flash movie in spite of everything. I know they spent more on that one then Batgirl but I guarantee they’re not making that money back when what they have to sell is this nightmare mess.
Cancelled: Batgirl, with its Afro-Latina lead and its trans hero/BFF
Still not Cancelled: The Flash movie, despite all of EM’s bullshit
It makes me angrier and angrier everytime I think about it.
I totally agree with you
I’m watching ‘Moonhaven’ and Emma Katherine McDonald is the lead and she is so hot it hurts, I don’t care if they make her straight, to me she is my angry lesbian girlfriend.
i am really sorry for all the folks’ disappointment.
pandemic stress & other stuff got me to the point where i couldn’t really handle all the b.s. w/ visual media – cancellations, queerbaiting, crappy show/movie endings… i started reading when i found out about digital library access. i pretty much only use tv/streaming for sports now, and other than when my teams lose or worrying about BG, it’s been good to skip the constant stream of frustration/sadness.
Screw Netflix for canceling First Kill. They couldn’t even do the decent thing and give us fans one more season to wrap things up. Leaving us in the dirt with that god awful cliffhanger is just cruel. I’m tired of getting invested in new shows because they keep getting axed left and right. What even is the point anymore?
Im so done with Netflix I just cancelled it & if I could cancel CW I would they took off everything I watched & they’re replacing them with CRAP