Exclusive: Amazon's 'Fallout' Franchise Expanding With Reality Competition Series From Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy

Happy Tuesday, folks, and Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

In case you missed it, I just laid out what the next few Avengers: Doomsday teasers could look like over on The Hot Mic with my pal John Rocha. This tweet is already at 40,000 views, and the internet is abuzz. Doomsday sure is shaping up to be a juggernaut. Does WB really want to release Dune: Part Three on the same day? Sure, that’s what the studio is saying right now, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see them pivot away from #Dunesday on Dec. 18, 2026. Stay tuned…

Last night, I finally caught up with The Secret Agent, which was good… but not quite great. I couldn’t take my eyes off of Wagner Moura, but with all due respect to his excellent performance, I have to say that if anyone deserves an Oscar for that movie, it’s casting director Gabriel Domingues, who populates this period film with some extraordinary faces. The production design from Thales Junqueira is also mighty impressive in terms of helping writer-director Kleber Mendonca Filho recreate the time (1977) and place (Brazil). But I no longer think Moura is a major threat to win Best Actor, which remains up for grabs in a relatively weak year.

This weekend, I braved the holiday crowds at the Grove to check out The Housemaid, which I had an absolute blast with thanks to its kooky twists and turns. It’s funny how much we heard about Sydney Sweeney’s other movies (Christy, Americana) tanking at the box office — movies that were never supposed to be blockbusters, by the way — and yet when Sweeney has a hit movie that posts a very respectable $19 million domestic opening, the press is awfully quiet. It’s almost as if Hollywood’s box office press writes about media darlings one way, and media targets another way, with different standards for each…

I also caught up with a pair of studio blockbusters — Disney’s Tron: Ares, and Lionsgate’s Now You See Me, Now You Don’t — neither of which was as bad as I’d feared. Tron: Ares definitely gets off to an uneven start, and Jared Leto is dreadfully flat as the title character, but the film’s laser-filled visuals and Nine Inch Nails score, buttressed by its relentless pacing, managed to hold my interest.

As for the latest Now You See Me movie, I liked the general story, the big twist, and the three newcomers (Dominic Sessa, Justice Smith, and Ariana Greenblatt) who execute it. The only major problem for me was Rosamund Pike, whose obnoxious South African accent should earn her a Razzie nomination in a few weeks. Hollywood needs to find her better material, because she’s a very good actress, and between this movie and Hallow Road, it was a pretty rough year for her. She also has two Guy Ritchie movies sitting on a shelf. In other words, I think it’s time for a new agent…

But enough about the Rings of Power star. I’m here tonight to write about another big Amazon series and how it plans to expand in the year ahead.

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