Movies

Resident Evil (2026)
Capcom’s survival-horror zombie media franchise has had more iterations than a video game character with infinite lives: six commercially successful but critically reviled Milla Jovovich films, a 2021 reboot (Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City), a 2022 Netflix series. Now it’s theatre-bound again, this time helmed by horror’s current golden boy, Zach Cregger.

Set during Resident Evil 2’s events — but updated from 1998 to the present day — the film follows Bryan (Austin Abrams), a medical courier whose routine delivery to Raccoon City General Hospital turns into one very long, very bad night.

Cregger, fresh off helming the Oscar-winning Weapons, is a genuine fan of the games, but he’s not interested in a scene-by-scene retread. He’s after the feeling of Resident Evil. “The most important thing to make it a Resident Evil story is the tone and the rhythm,” he told Deadline, describing Bryan’s arc as a slow creep into darkness that erupts into a full sprint for survival.

After decades of false starts, this might finally be the adaptation that sticks.

The Dog Stars
Post-apocalyptic cinema has always mirrored the anxieties of its era — and Ridley Scott, once linked to a version of I Am Legend, is finally staking his claim on the genre with an adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel. 

Pandemic survivor Hig (Jacob Elordi) lives alongside his dog, Jasper, and hardened ex-Marine Bangley (Josh Brolin). When a mysterious radio transmission hints that other survivors may still exist, he takes to the skies in search of them, eventually encountering former Navy SEAL Pops (Guy Pearce) and Pops’ medic daughter, Cima (Margaret Qualley).

Elordi, hot off Wuthering Heights (available to watch on KrisWorld) and an Oscar nod for Frankenstein, keeps building his leading-man credentials. (Paul Mescal was Scott’s first choice to play Higs, but he had scheduling conflicts, so Elordi stepped in.) Scott tells Empire: “[Elordi] can drive tractors, he’s great with dogs, and he’s a very outdoors, practical kind of guy. I met with him, and that was it.” The 88-year-old director isn’t slowing down either — he’s telling anyone who’ll listen this is his best work since The Martian. Bold claim. We’ll see. 

Practical Magic 2
Sequel fatigue is real, but this one earns its place in line.

The 1998 original flopped at the box office but cast a slow-burn spell over the decades since, its themes of sisterhood, trauma, and generational curses turning it into a bona fide cult favourite.

Now, with two Oscars between them, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock step back into witch sisters Gillian and Sally’s shoes. Set 25 years on, Practical Magic 2 raises the stakes: Sally is a mother now, and it’s time for the siblings to reckon with where their magic really came from.

TV

Reacher S4 
Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) — still all muscle, top-notch deduction skills, and sharp one-liners — is back for another round of political conspiracy and brute-force problem-solving.

Past seasons pitted him against arms traffickers and corrupt government cabals. This season, which draws from Lee Child’s Gone Tomorrow, opens with a public suicide, which then unravels into a tangle of shadowy figures and deadly secrets. As ever, Reacher must rise to the occasion and bring justice to the baddies. 

Bonus for fans: his army buddy Frances Neagley (Maria Sten) is getting her own spin-off, Neagley, which also comes out this month.

Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

Adults S2
They’re adults in name only — nobody in this show has their life together, and that’s exactly the point. 

From Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, Adults follows five twenty-somethings — Samir (Malik Elassal), Billie (Lucy Freyer), Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), Issa (Amita Rao), and Anton (Owen Thiele) — who live in Samir’s childhood home, navigating love, work, and friendship. Theirs is an implausible living situation — when was the last time you saw five friends in a bathroom together at the same time? — but this show makes no pretence of being realistic. Instead, it’s all about being fun.

Think Friends and Girls thrown in a blender for the terminally online: bawdy, unhinged, and much funnier than it has any right to be.

Streaming on Disney+.

Music

Ariana Grande — petal
Ariana Grande has a lot to get off her chest. On her eighth studio album, petal, she digs into unresolved feelings, transforming them into something soft and distorted. The target of her frustration? Former lovers, the media, so-called fans ... the usual list goes on. But Grande’s no stranger to speaking her mind. Her last album, Eternal Sunshine, aired out her divorce, while thank u, next turned a string of traumatic life events into a playful kiss-off.

petal follows down a similar path, but offers a different bite. Dreamy R&B and electronic textures are served with a darker, grungier edge, while sadness is replaced with subtle anger. Every song drips with chilling vengeance — even the more lovesick ones carry a sinister glint. There is a moment, though, when she stops seeing red and catches a glimpse of light. “Just deep breaths, honey,” she sings on the final track, “nowhere, nobody”. A note to self that even after a raging storm, peace will come.