Daisy Ridley Leads Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea — plus More

Evening News · Wednesday 21 October 2026

Daisy Ridley is heading for the ocean floor. The Star Wars star will lead Paramount+’s new take on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, with a strange submarine found frozen in Arctic ice. This evening’s edition also has the battle-ready trailer for The Rings of Power season 3, a Japanese horror anthology from the directors of Cure and Ju-on, the return of Ghoulies, a new horror label for online creators, Simon Pegg as a serial killer for Channel 4, a new Wallander for the BBC and a bid for Lionsgate.

The News That Matters

Daisy Ridley will command a mysterious submarine in Paramount+’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

• New development: Paramount+ has ordered an eight-episode series, with Ridley starring and executive producing, Variety reported on Wednesday 21 October
• The story: Ridley plays Lee Crane, recruited into a classified government programme after an Arctic expedition kills her twin sister. At its centre is the USS Seaview, a retro-futuristic submarine found entombed in the ice, which only powers up when Lee steps aboard
• Behind it: Oscar winner Akiva Goldsman writes, and Matt Shakman, who directed WandaVision and The Fantastic Four: First Steps, directs. Legendary Television produces with the estate of Irwin Allen
• UK availability: No release date yet. Paramount+ is available in the UK, but a UK date has not yet been confirmed

The Seaview is marked with symbols “from a history that shouldn’t exist”, and Lee’s missions take her crew into an uneasy alliance with government power brokers as they try to contain mysterious forces leaking into our world. Along the way, the series promises a hidden truth about the oceans, an erased chapter of human history and the city of Atlantis.

Irwin Allen, later the master of disaster behind The Poseidon Adventure, made the original 1961 film with Walter Pidgeon and Peter Lorre, which led to the 1964–68 TV series starring Richard Basehart and David Hedison. Ridley’s next screen outing is much closer: she is in Ti West’s Ebenezer: A Christmas Carol, out on Friday 13 November. Watch its latest trailer here.

The Rings of Power season 3 trailer sends dragons, a Balrog and the Ringwraiths to war

• New development: Prime Video released the full trailer on Wednesday 21 October
• The story: All of Middle-earth is now at war with Sauron. His Ring-servants roam in black armour, the Elves try to hold the front line, Khazad-dûm is split by family feuds, Númenor edges towards civil war, and Gandalf fights to turn the tide in the eastern lands of Rhûn
• New faces: Jamie Campbell Bower, Eddie Marsan, Andrew Richardson, Zubin Varla and Adam Young join the cast, and Simon Pegg voices the Balrog
• UK availability: On Prime Video in the UK from 11 November, with the first four episodes, then two more on 18 November and the final two on 25 November

Charlie Vickers returns as Sauron, alongside Morfydd Clark as Galadriel, Robert Aramayo as Elrond, with Ismael Cruz Córdova, Charles Edwards and Markella Kavenagh also back. Showrunners J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay are back, with Charlotte Brändström, Sanaa Hamri and Stefan Schwartz directing the episodes.

The new trailer is the biggest, darkest look yet at the season, and it makes clear that the slow build of the first two seasons is over. This is the war of the Elves and Sauron, and the Second Age is starting to look a lot like the Middle-earth of Peter Jackson’s films.

Watch the trailer

Cure director Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Ju-on’s Takashi Shimizu join Disney+ horror anthology Night Tales Club

• New development: Disney+ and Hulu announced the six-part Japanese series on Tuesday 20 October, Variety and Screen reported
• The story: Takayuki Yamada plays Hojo, a businessman obsessed with the unexplained, who offers 20 million yen in gold to anyone who can bring him a first-hand account of the supernatural, with proof
• Directors: Kurosawa and Shimizu each direct an episode, as do Shinzo Katayama (Gannibal), Yukiko Sode, Yuichiro Sakashita and Yosuke Nakamura; Kenji Nakajima directs Hojo’s scenes
• UK availability: Due on Disney+ in January 2027. The exact UK date has not yet been confirmed

Each episode adapts a different story from Ichi Sawamura’s collection of short horror tales, and Sawamura has adapted them for the screen himself. Hojo believes that ghosts and curses are “bugs”, glitches that point to a hidden conspiracy, which gives the anthology an unusual hook.

For J-horror fans, this is a remarkable line-up. Kurosawa’s Cure and Pulse and Shimizu’s Ju-on helped define the genre around the turn of the century, and Katayama’s Gannibal is one of the best horror series Disney+ has. You can catch up with Gannibal on Disney+ in the UK now.

The Ghoulies reboot is back on track, with a new trilogy aiming to shoot in 2027

• New development: A lawsuit that stalled the project has been settled, Bloody Disgusting and Brain Mutant reported on Tuesday 20 October
• What happened: Writer and producer Theo Lemasters sued original co-writer and producer Jefery Levy in 2025. A notice of settlement was filed on 5 October, and the case was dismissed the next day
• The plan: A trilogy for a new generation, with two scripts finished and a third under way. Levy says production on “Ghoulies 2027” will begin once financing is in place
• UK availability: No cast, release date or distributor yet. UK date not yet confirmed

Levy told Brain Mutant: “We have an incredible reboot script. Cannot get financing until the legal issue is settled. Once the legal issue is settled, we will begin production on Ghoulies 2027.” He and director Luca Bercovici won back the domestic rights to their film before announcing the reboot in 2024.

The original, from Charles Band’s Empire Pictures, followed a young man who inherits a house where his Satanist father is buried and learns to summon tiny demons. Its poster, with a ghoulie popping out of a toilet, became one of the most famous of the VHS era, and it was an early role for Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay.

Late Night with the Devil producers launch Made By Spooky, a horror label for online creators

• New development: Image Nation Studios, Spooky Pictures and Made By Us Studios announced the label on Wednesday 21 October, Deadline reported
• What it will make: Original short-form, vertical serialised and feature-length horror from creators who built their audiences on YouTube, TikTok and other platforms
• Behind it: Image Nation and Spooky Pictures have made Watcher, Late Night with the Devil, Hokum and the V/H/S films together
• UK availability: The first projects arrive in 2027. UK release plans not yet confirmed

The timing makes sense. Creator-led horror is booming after the success of Curry Barker’s Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms, and Spooky Pictures is already making Barker’s next film, the horror comedy Anything but Ghosts, for Focus Features.

It is the second announcement from Image Nation and Spooky in two days. On Tuesday, they were behind the Reddit horror adaptation Future Me, from the Deadstream directors, which we covered in last night’s Evening News. They are also working with A24 on a new Texas Chain Saw Massacre series and film.

Simon Pegg plays a serial killer in the first trailer for Channel 4’s Hunting Alice Bell

• New development: Channel 4 released the trailer on Wednesday 21 October
• The story: When the new identity of Alice Bell, a nurse and the former accomplice of killer anaesthetist Jason Nash (Pegg), surfaces online, five women are targeted by vigilantes. They band together to clear their names, but can they trust each other?
• Behind it: Created by David Baddiel and film critic Peter Bradshaw, and directed by Paul Walker
• UK availability: Six episodes on Channel 4 and Channel 4 streaming from November. Exact date not yet confirmed

Alexandra Roach leads the cast as Fran Da Silva, alongside Amanda Abbington, Emily Barber, Toni O’Rourke and Christina Bennington as the other women called Alice. Rudi Dharmalingam and Death in Paradise’s Ralf Little also star.

Baddiel has said the idea came from real cases of British women who were hounded by the public because people wrongly believed they were notorious figures living under new names. It is a busy month for Pegg, who is also the voice of the Balrog in The Rings of Power (see above).

Watch the trailer

A new Wallander, starring Gustaf Skarsgård, is coming to BBC Four

• New development: The BBC has bought the UK rights to the new Swedish series, Deadline reported on Wednesday 21 October
• The story: Skarsgård plays Kurt Wallander from the age of 42, newly separated after 20 years of marriage, estranged from his daughter and pushed to the limit by a run of high-stakes cases
• The format: Three 90-minute films for Sweden’s TV4, based on Henning Mankell’s novels, which have sold more than 40 million copies
• UK availability: Coming to BBC Four and BBC iPlayer. UK date not yet confirmed

Skarsgård is best known as Floki in Vikings. Antonia Pyk and Molly Hartleb direct, along with Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja, the duo behind the Swedish science fiction film Aniara.

It is a homecoming of sorts. The Swedish Wallander films were a cornerstone of BBC Four’s Saturday-night subtitled crime slot, and Kenneth Branagh played the detective in the BBC’s own English-language version from 2008 to 2016.

Dune studio Legendary makes a new offer to buy Lionsgate

• New development: Legendary Entertainment has submitted a takeover offer for Lionsgate, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday 20 October
• The reaction: Lionsgate shares jumped more than 15%, valuing the company at about $3.6bn. Neither company would comment, and the terms are not known
• Why it matters: A merger would let Legendary, the company behind Dune, Godzilla x Kong and A Minecraft Movie, distribute its own films, and bring it franchises including John Wick, The Hunger Games and Saw
• UK availability: Nothing changes for UK audiences yet. Dune: Part Three is in UK cinemas from Friday 18 December

Legendary, which is backed by the investment giant Apollo, first explored a deal last year after Starz split from Lionsgate. Banijay and Mediawan have also been linked with Lionsgate, but neither has made a formal offer.

Lionsgate is in a strong position after Michael became its biggest film ever and the first biopic to pass $1bn worldwide, although it has just lost its bid to enter the film as a musical at the Golden Globes. Its next big UK release, Ghosts: The Possession of Button House, is in cinemas from Friday 23 October. The studio reports its latest results on Thursday 5 November.

Would you watch Daisy Ridley’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, or should some classics stay on the seabed?