Streaming Rewind: Big Week For Adaptations, Meltdowns and Shows No One Saw Coming

From George R.R. Martin taking swings at House of the Dragon to Beetlejuice: The Animated Series making its triumphant streaming debut, here's what was new and notable in streaming this week.

Sep 7, 2024 - 15:00

Streaming Rewind: Big Week For Adaptations, Meltdowns and Shows No One Saw Coming

Welcome to Streaming Rewind, a weekly breakdown of the new and noteworthy as we work to help readers wade through the absolute deluge of television series and movies in the streaming space. Check out our last entry: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Returns and Why The Netflix Top 10 Is A Toss up.

Who knew that artists were such sensitive folks? Couldn’t be a longstanding trope or anything! The new and noteworthy of streaming this week runs the gamut of emotions, featuring the live-action debut of a long-beloved character, the arrival of a fan-favorite animated series on streaming, a tantrum, and vampires somehow. Oh, and Disney and DirecTV are in a fight. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Disney gets in carrier disputes all the time. But for now DirecTV subscribers will be missing ESPN, ABC and more for the foreseeable future.

Anyway, to the underworld!

Beetlejuice The Animated Series Is on Tubi

Shortly after Beetlejuice beat Easter weekend records at the box office in 1988, an animated series of the same name was released on ABC (and later Fox), further cementing the green-tinged Ghost with the Most’s place in young audiences’ hearts. Now that audience is all grown up and awash in nostalgia as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice hits theaters and the aforementioned animated series is finally available to stream.

Tubi isn’t a traditional streaming network. Instead, it’s what’s known as a FAST channel (free, ad-supported TV). With the rising cost of streamers and as bundles get more and more complicated, audiences have shifted in droves to these FAST channels, with Tubi and Pluto seeing growing success over recent years. Tubi itself has become known as a bastion for horror fans, as the platform carries a host of classic and obscure horror titles. Beetlejuice’s animated series is a big get for them as they continue to expand their offerings for that demographic. (It’s me, I’m the demographic.)

Tom Bombadil Is a Mystery No More?

Nah. Tom Bombadil will always be a mystery. Tolkien insisted that it be so. However, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power introduced the character into live-action canon this week in Episode 4 of the show’s second season, and has given us some interesting new information about Tolkien’s enigmatic hermit that changes everything we know about the character.

Is George R.R. Martin Ok?

For those who may have missed it, George R.R. Martin had a bit of a moment this week. The short version of the story is that Martin is not happy with how showrunner Ryan Condal has been handling his House of the Dragon adaptation. The longer version can be found in our story breaking down the saga.

The Fire & Blood (and A Song of Ice and Fire, on which Game of Thrones is based) author took umbrage with the changes to the famed Blood and Cheese storyline despite agreeing the performances were solid, noting that “the scene in the book is stronger.” Of course, if you followed our House of the Dragon coverage, you already know that we felt that the show was right to make the changes to the infamous moment.

Martin’s issues expanded beyond Season 2, it seems. The author essentially spoiled a huge plot point for Season 3 — which will not be released for years. He made his judgements based on an outline (as the scripts are not yet finished), and used his blog post to discuss a major death. He would go on to call this and other changes not outlined in his post as “toxic,” which is especially ironic given that Condal and company have made a concerted effort to avoid the overt sexual violence that makes up a good hunk of the source material and HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Ultimately, the post was removed and HBO issued a statement on the matter after what we can only assume was a very stern conversation. It’s unlikely that any of this tension is resolved, but I think most fans would just prefer Martin puts that energy into finishing The Winds of Winter, one of the final books in the Game of Thrones saga that has now been in development for 14 years.

In any event, this is a good reminder that the first two seasons of House of the Dragon are available to stream right now on Max.

Somehow, Twilight Returned

That’s right, we’re not free of Twilight and its unhealthy romance tropes yet, friends! Netflix announced this week that they would be releasing an animated adaptation of Midnight Sun, author Stephanie Meyer’s 2020 novel written from Edward Cullen’s perspective. Fans expressed some annoyance that the series would be animated rather than live-action, but given that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart — who starred as Edward Cullen and Bella Swan respectively — want nothing to do with the franchise any longer, this was likely the easiest (and cheapest) route for Netflix to do a temperature check on the Twilight fandom in the year of our lady 2024.

After the release of Midnight Sun in 2020, Meyer noted that she’d be working on two additional novels in the franchise after completing a piece of original work. So, if this news is for you, you still have plenty of Edward and Bella coming your way in the future. Provided, of course, that Meyer writes faster than Martin.