Bandwagon Nerds News Report (10/23/2026): Carrie Lives, Bond Narrows the Field & Halloweentown Returns

Carrie earns Season 2, the James Bond search reaches its final screen tests and Disney begins developing Halloweentown 5.

Thursday delivered good news for horror fans, a major step toward finding the next James Bond and a Disney revival that probably just made an entire generation feel considerably older.

Prime Video renewed Mike Flanagan’s Carrie only two weeks after its debut, while Amazon MGM’s search for Daniel Craig’s successor has reportedly narrowed to four finalists preparing for screen tests. Disney is also developing a fifth Halloweentown movie 20 years after the franchise’s last installment, and one of gaming’s biggest recent surprise hits has crossed another sales milestone while preparing to move onto phones.

It’s the Bandwagon Nerds News Report for October 23, 2026!

Carrie Gets a Second Season at Prime Video

Prime Video has renewed Mike Flanagan’s Carrie for Season 2 after the Stephen King adaptation became the platform’s No. 1 title in more than 105 countries following its October 7 premiere.

Flanagan will return as showrunner and executive producer alongside King, allowing the series to move beyond the events of the original novel rather than treating the first eight episodes as another self-contained adaptation. That immediately separates this version from nearly every previous screen interpretation of Carrie White, which generally reaches the same devastating endpoint established by King’s book.

The renewal validates the largest creative gamble Flanagan made with the material. His series was never designed simply to retell the high-school tragedy audiences already knew from Brian De Palma’s film and multiple later adaptations; it modernized Carrie’s isolation around cyberbullying, school-shooting anxiety and a world where Margaret White’s warnings can occasionally sound disturbingly plausible before revealing where her fanaticism leads.

Season 2 now gets to answer a question the novel never needed to consider: what happens if Carrie survives long enough to live with what she has done and encounter other people whose abilities make her feel less singular? That turns a familiar horror story into something capable of becoming its own mythology, which is considerably more interesting than stretching the original plot across another eight episodes.

The Next James Bond Search Reaches Its Final Round

Amazon MGM’s search for the next James Bond has reportedly entered the screen-test stage, with Jack Lowden, Callum Turner and Josh O’Connor among four finalists being considered for the role.

The fourth contender is reportedly a lesser-known actor whose identity has not been made public. Screen tests begin Friday and will continue through next week, while Jacob Elordi, whose name had repeatedly appeared in Bond speculation, is no longer expected to test.

Whoever lands the role will become the first Bond chosen under the franchise’s new creative structure. Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson surrendered day-to-day creative control to Amazon earlier this year, with Amy Pascal and David Heyman now producing, Denis Villeneuve directing and Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight writing the screenplay.

That makes this casting process more consequential than simply deciding who follows Daniel Craig. Amazon has openly discussed expanding Bond beyond a movie arriving every several years, creating the possibility that the next 007 could eventually be asked to participate in television or other franchise extensions Broccoli and Wilson historically resisted.

The shortlist itself suggests Amazon is not looking for another established action star. Lowden, Turner and O’Connor are all recognizable but still young enough to define the role for a decade, and each brings a dramatically different screen presence. Bond rumors have produced enough false starts that nothing is finished until somebody signs the contract, but actual screen tests mean the endless speculation is finally approaching a real answer.

Disney Is Developing Halloweentown 5

Disney Channel and Disney+ are developing a fifth Halloweentown movie, bringing the fantasy franchise back two decades after Return to Halloweentown seemingly ended the series.

Lily Houghton and Ryan Koehn are writing the script based on the characters created by original screenwriter Paul Bernbaum. Plot details remain under wraps, and Disney has not announced whether Kimberly J. Brown, Sara Paxton or other members of the previous casts will return.

Halloweentown began as a 1998 Disney Channel Original Movie starring Brown as Marnie Piper and Debbie Reynolds as her grandmother Aggie, eventually producing three sequels. The films became seasonal staples for Disney Channel viewers, turning the relatively inexpensive fantasy series into one of the company’s most durable pieces of Halloween nostalgia.

That nostalgia is probably why a fifth movie makes considerably more sense now than it would have ten years ago. The children who grew up watching Marnie discover Halloweentown are adults, many with kids approaching the same age they were when the original premiered, giving Disney an obvious opportunity to build a generational continuation rather than another straight reboot.

The question of which Marnie returns will inevitably dominate early discussion. Brown originated the role through the first three films before Paxton replaced her in Return to Halloweentown, making this one of those rare revival projects where simply announcing the cast could become a surprisingly complicated piece of franchise history.

Dispatch Passes Five Million Copies and Heads to Mobile

AdHoc Studio announced that Dispatch has sold more than five million copies and will launch on iOS and Android on December 9.

The superhero workplace comedy adventure has become one of 2026’s biggest independent success stories after initially launching on PC and PlayStation 5. The new mobile version brings its branching narrative and dialogue-driven structure to a format that should suit the game particularly well, while an update released Thursday added developer commentary and storyboard-viewing modes for Deluxe Edition owners.

Dispatch casts players as former superhero Robert Robertson, who takes a job managing a dysfunctional collection of reformed villains after losing his powered armor. Much of the game revolves around assigning heroes to emergencies while navigating office politics, personal relationships and dialogue choices that gradually shape the larger story.

Five million copies puts Dispatch well beyond the level of a cult narrative hit. It also gives AdHoc considerably more flexibility with whatever comes next, whether that means expanding Dispatch itself or using the success to support another story-driven project.

The mobile port is especially logical because Dispatch never depended on twitch controls or visual spectacle to work. Its strongest moments are conversations, choices and the uncomfortable realization that sending the wrong employee to a relatively routine emergency may have just destroyed three different relationships inside the office.

Michael Gray, TV’s Original Billy Batson, Dies at 75

Michael Gray, best known for playing Billy Batson on the 1970s Saturday-morning television series Shazam!, has died at 75.

Gray played the teenage alter ego of Captain Marvel across all three seasons of the CBS series from 1974 through 1976. The show paired Billy with a traveling mentor as he crossed the country helping people before transforming into the superhero played first by Jackson Bostwick and later John Davey.

That version of Shazam existed decades before superhero television became one of entertainment’s dominant genres, during an era when bringing comic-book characters to live action required considerably more imagination from viewers than modern visual effects demand. For a generation of children, Gray was therefore one of the earliest faces connecting Saturday-morning television directly to DC Comics.

His career extended beyond Shazam!, but Billy Batson remained the role with which he was most closely associated. Gray also continued appearing at conventions and embracing the series long after it became a piece of superhero television history.

Modern audiences have seen multiple versions of Billy and Shazam across animation and feature films, but Gray belonged to a period when seeing a comic-book hero regularly on television still felt unusual. That gives his relatively short three-season run a lasting place in the genre’s much longer evolution.

Game Boy Adds Three More Classics to Nintendo Switch Online

Nintendo is adding Avenging Spirit, Mole Mania and Revenge of the ’Gator to the Game Boy library for Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack members on October 27.

Mole Mania is the standout historically because the 1996 puzzle game was produced by Shigeru Miyamoto but never became one of Nintendo’s widely revived franchises. Players control Muddy Mole through underground puzzle environments built around digging between surface and subterranean spaces, creating the kind of deceptively simple design Nintendo’s handheld games frequently excelled at.

Avenging Spirit brings something considerably stranger. The Jaleco action game follows a ghost capable of possessing enemies and using their different abilities, an idea that still feels unusually inventive for a Game Boy title released more than three decades ago.

Revenge of the ’Gator rounds out the update with HAL Laboratory’s 1989 pinball game. None of these titles carries the recognition of Pokémon, Zelda or Mario, but additions like this are arguably where Nintendo’s retro service becomes most useful because they make games that are difficult to encounter legitimately available again without requiring collectors to hunt down aging cartridges.

What to Watch This Weekend

DC Studios’ Clayface opens in theaters Friday, giving one of Batman’s stranger villains a full horror movie rather than positioning him as another supporting antagonist inside a conventional superhero story. James Watkins directs from a screenplay credited to Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, with Tom Rhys Harries starring as the disfigured actor whose transformation eventually turns him into living, shape-shifting clay.

The movie arrives as DC continues testing just how many genres its characters can support outside traditional superhero structures. Clayface has always contained obvious body-horror potential, and treating that transformation as something genuinely grotesque rather than another excuse for a large CGI battle gives the character a much clearer reason to carry his own film.

Netflix provides the biggest Friday streaming option with Lupin Part 4, bringing Omar Sy back as Assane Diop for another round of elaborate thefts, disguises and manipulation inspired by gentleman thief Arsène Lupin. The service also premieres Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story, a documentary following the comedian’s career and longtime openness about mental health.

That makes this a rare weekend where the theatrical and streaming choices offer genuinely different experiences rather than several interchangeable franchise releases. Clayface is the obvious nerd-culture centerpiece, but Lupin returning after another extended break gives Netflix one of its most recognizable international series back at exactly the right time for a weekend binge.

Carrie has been adapted repeatedly for almost 50 years, but Mike Flanagan has now earned the opportunity to tell a story Stephen King never wrote. James Bond is preparing to hand 007 to another actor more than six decades after Sean Connery first introduced himself at a casino table, while Disney believes enough people still care about Halloweentown to reopen the portal after 20 years.

Even Nintendo’s Game Boy additions fit the theme on a much smaller scale. Preserving something does not always mean freezing it exactly where it was; sometimes survival comes from finding another audience and giving the original idea somewhere new to go.

The harder trick is knowing which stories actually have another chapter in them. Thursday suggested there are still quite a few.

This report includes information from: TheHollywoodReporter.com, TheWrap.com, PrimeVideo-related reporting, Disney-related reporting, Gematsu.com, Nintendo.com and Netflix.com.