Bandwagon Nerds News Report (11/3/2026): Criminal Minds Ends, Percy Jackson Goes to War & Persona Leaks

Criminal Minds prepares to end after 20 seasons, Percy Jackson goes to war and leaked footage may reveal Atlus’ next Persona remake.

November opened with one television institution preparing to close its final case while several considerably younger franchises started showing us what comes next.

Criminal Minds: Evolution will end with the franchise’s 20th overall season in 2027, bringing a run that began on CBS in 2005 toward an unexpectedly abrupt conclusion. Disney+ unleashed the full trailer for Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3, while Neve Campbell confirmed that Sidney Prescott is not finished with Ghostface after all. Gaming delivered a much rougher story with the official dissolution of Nagoshi Studio, but Atlus fans received something considerably more intriguing when apparent footage of a remake of the original Persona surfaced online.

It’s the Bandwagon Nerds News Report for November 3, 2026!

Criminal Minds Will End After 20 Seasons

Criminal Minds: Evolution will end with its upcoming fifth Paramount+ season, giving the larger Criminal Minds franchise 20 seasons across its original CBS run and streaming revival.

The decision arrived after Paramount+ had already renewed the series earlier this year, and production on the final season was completed before the cast and creative team learned it would be the end. Showrunner Erica Messer acknowledged the sudden nature of the cancellation while thanking the actors, writers, crew and fans who kept the series alive through two different eras.

That makes the ending considerably stranger than a traditional planned farewell. Criminal Minds originally ran for 15 seasons from 2005 through 2020 before Paramount+ revived the Behavioral Analysis Unit in 2022 as Criminal Minds: Evolution. Joe Mantegna, A.J. Cook, Kirsten Vangsness, Aisha Tyler, Adam Rodriguez and Paget Brewster eventually rebuilt enough of the familiar ensemble for the revival to feel less like a reboot and more like the show simply resumed after an extended break.

The frustrating part is that Season 20 apparently was not written as a definitive ending. The production wrapped before the cancellation decision, meaning viewers should probably temper expectations for the kind of carefully constructed finale that two decades of television might normally deserve.

The cast has already started reacting with the appropriate mixture of humor and disappointment. Cook dressed as a zombie for Halloween while posing beside a tombstone bearing her character JJ’s name, while Brewster simply announced herself as a “free agent.”

Twenty seasons is still an extraordinary run by any standard. Criminal Minds survived cast departures, changing television habits, one cancellation and the transition from broadcast procedural to streaming series. If this really is the final case, the BAU lasted far longer than almost anyone could have predicted when those first profilers walked into CBS more than two decades ago.

Percy Jackson Season 3 Is Going to War

Disney+ released the full trailer for Percy Jackson and the Olympians Season 3, and The Titan’s Curse is bringing considerably larger stakes with it.

The season adapts Rick Riordan’s third Percy Jackson novel and finds Percy, Grover, Thalia and their allies trying to rescue Annabeth while the growing threat of Kronos pushes the conflict between the Olympians and Titans closer to open war. The trailer makes that escalation explicit, with Percy warning that surviving what comes next may require the gods themselves to finally work together.

Season 3 also expands the divine side of the cast. Kate McKinnon, Jennifer Beals and Ming-Na Wen are among the new additions, joining returning stars Walker Scobell, Leah Sava Jeffries, Aryan Simhadri, Charlie Bushnell, Tamara Smart, Daniel Diemer and Dior Goodjohn.

The Titan’s Curse was where Riordan’s original books started feeling substantially bigger than a series of individual summer quests. The first two stories established Camp Half-Blood and the basic rules of the world, but the third book widened the mythology, introduced characters who remained important through the end of the saga and made Kronos feel less like a distant threat adults kept mentioning.

That makes Season 3 an important test for the television adaptation. Percy Jackson has already proven it can reproduce the books more faithfully than the movies did. Now it has to demonstrate that the show itself can grow alongside the story rather than simply becoming a longer version of each novel.

The season launches November 20 on Disney+ and Hulu with a two-episode premiere.

Sunrise on the Reaping Is Becoming Meta’s Hollywood Experiment

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping will open in 3D on November 20 as part of a new partnership between Lionsgate and Meta, and the experiment will eventually extend beyond theaters.

Meta worked with Lionsgate, director Francis Lawrence and visual-effects studio DNEG to convert the film into 3D. After its theatrical run, the same version is scheduled to become available through Meta’s new VR glasses when the hardware launches next spring.

It marks the first time Meta has partnered directly with a Hollywood studio to convert a feature film for a theatrical 3D release. Lionsgate also says additional movies will eventually become available through the hardware, suggesting Sunrise on the Reaping is being treated as a proof of concept rather than a one-off promotion.

The timing makes sense because Hunger Games suddenly has substantial momentum again. Early reactions to Sunrise on the Reaping have been extremely positive, particularly toward Joseph Zada’s performance as young Haymitch Abernathy, while Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson and Woody Harrelson are all returning for material set after the original saga.

Using that enthusiasm to demonstrate expensive new hardware is a familiar technology-company strategy. What is different here is Meta inserting itself earlier in the pipeline by helping create the theatrical version rather than simply licensing the movie after somebody else finishes it.

Whether people actually want to watch full-length movies through VR glasses remains the larger question. Hollywood has repeatedly tried to make 3D viewing permanent, and consumers have repeatedly demonstrated that the format needs a very good reason to remain part of their lives.

For Meta, apparently Haymitch surviving the Quarter Quell is going to help make the case.

Nagoshi Studio Officially Closes

Nagoshi Studio has officially dissolved after NetEase ended funding for the developer founded by longtime Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi.

Japan’s Official Gazette confirmed the dissolution Monday, ending months of uncertainty surrounding both the studio and its debut game, Gang of Dragon. Nagoshi Studio was founded in 2021 after Nagoshi left Sega and Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, where he had spent decades helping create and develop the franchise now known internationally as Like a Dragon.

Gang of Dragon was finally unveiled last December with Train to Busan and Eternals actor Ma Dong-seok in the starring role. Earlier reporting indicated the project was already deep into development when NetEase concluded that completing it would require roughly another ¥7 billion, or more than $40 million.

The closure becomes another casualty of NetEase dramatically reducing its international game-development investments. Several studios created or funded during the company’s aggressive global expansion have either closed, lost backing or been forced to seek new ownership.

This one feels particularly significant because Nagoshi was not an unproven developer being given his first opportunity. He helped build one of Sega’s most recognizable modern franchises before leaving to establish something new with substantial financial backing.

That experience ultimately could not protect the studio once the investment strategy surrounding it changed.

The unanswered question is what happens to Nagoshi himself and whether Gang of Dragon can ever survive in another form. The game had progressed far enough to receive a full reveal less than a year ago, but a recognizable creator and partially completed project do not automatically make tens of millions of dollars appear.

A Persona Remake May Have Just Leaked

Nearly two minutes of footage apparently showing a remake of the original Persona surfaced online over Halloween weekend, giving Atlus fans an unexpected look at what could be another major rebuild of the series’ early history.

The footage appears to show exploration, combat and event scenes constructed in Unreal Engine. Eriko Kirishima from the original Persona is visible, while Persona 2 protagonist Tatsuya Suou appears during one combat sequence, raising questions about whether the footage contains temporary assets or whether Atlus may be experimenting with more than one early Persona remake.

None of this has been officially confirmed by Atlus, which makes the footage very different from the already announced Persona 4 Revival. There are nevertheless several details lending credibility to the leak, including animation and presentation similarities with material already shown from Revival.

There is also precedent for exactly this kind of leak. Work-in-progress Persona 3 Reload footage appeared online before Atlus officially announced that remake, meaning a developer showreel accidentally revealing another project would hardly be unprecedented.

The larger question is how aggressively Atlus intends to rebuild the franchise’s earliest games. Persona 3 through Persona 5 created the social-simulation structure most modern audiences associate with the series, while the original Persona and both Persona 2 titles play considerably differently.

Simply giving those games modern graphics would not suddenly make them feel like Persona 5. Changing them enough to meet modern expectations, however, risks rewriting exactly what makes them historically interesting.

Atlus has already demonstrated with Persona 3 Reload that there is an enormous audience for carefully rebuilt versions of older entries. If the leaked footage is genuine, the company may be preparing to find out how far backward that appetite extends.

Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold Moves to February

Final Fantasy XIV: Evercold will launch February 23, 2027, moving the expansion slightly later than its previously planned January window.

Early access begins February 19, while preorders open November 4. Square Enix used its latest presentation to reveal substantially more than the date, including Zephyr, the expansion’s second new job. The physical ranged DPS uses a crossbow and fights alongside an avian familiar named Nephele.

Evercold is also adding the Final Fantasy VII Remake-inspired Beyond the Lifestream raid series, expanded character customization, a new seasonal reward structure and Fierce difficulty, which is intended to sit between the existing Normal and Savage raid levels.

The already announced Evangelion crossover received another major preview as well. Ghosts of Desire will include an alliance raid alongside new higher-difficulty eight-player versions of selected encounters, allowing Square Enix to push the collaboration well beyond cosmetic rewards.

February is not a dramatic delay, particularly for an MMO expansion expected to become the foundation for years of subsequent updates. Final Fantasy XIV players have also lived through enough launch congestion to understand why getting another month of development time can be considerably preferable to everybody attempting to enter the same server while something catches fire.

Evercold increasingly looks less like another collection of zones and raids and more like Square Enix trying to reassess several of XIV’s long-established systems at once.

After more than a decade, that kind of experimentation may matter more than simply adding another continent.

Sidney Prescott Will Be Back for Scream 8

Neve Campbell has confirmed she will return as Sidney Prescott in Scream 8, removing one major question surrounding another sequel that is still early in development.

Campbell kept everything else deliberately vague, saying only that the movie is “in the pipeline” and confirming, “I’ll be in it.” Lilla and Nora Zuckerman are writing the screenplay, although no director has been officially announced.

Sidney returned to the center of the franchise in Scream 7 after Campbell sat out Scream VI because of a salary dispute. Her comeback helped reconnect the series to its original protagonist while the seventh movie also brought several other familiar faces back into Ghostface’s increasingly complicated history.

The immediate challenge is making another Sidney story feel necessary. Scream has spent decades turning its own repetition into part of the joke, but even a franchise built around horror-sequel rules eventually needs something more compelling than finding another person willing to wear the mask.

Campbell remains the series’ strongest connection to the original film because Sidney has been allowed to change rather than remain frozen as the teenager Ghostface first attacked. Every return therefore carries more weight than a conventional legacy cameo.

Scream 8 does not need to prove Sidney can survive another Ghostface.

At this point, it needs to explain why Ghostface still thinks trying is a good idea.

What to Watch Tuesday

Tuesday brings Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil reboot to premium digital platforms following a theatrical run that pushed the horror adaptation past $400 million worldwide.

That makes it an easy catch-up option for anyone who skipped theaters, particularly after the movie successfully moved Resident Evil away from the previous live-action continuity and back toward a more contained survival-horror structure.

Bad Apples also arrives on premium digital Tuesday, giving Saoirse Ronan’s dark comedy another opportunity to find viewers following its theatrical run.

Gaming has a more immediate new release with ArcheAge Chronicles entering PC Early Access. XLGAMES’ action-focused MMO is attempting to rebuild the ArcheAge concept around more modern combat and exploration after the original game’s complicated history with monetization and publishing.

None of these are enormous premiere-night events, but together they make Tuesday a useful catch-up day before November’s larger releases start arriving.

Criminal Minds survived its first cancellation long enough to earn five additional seasons. Sidney Prescott is once again returning to a franchise she has repeatedly escaped, while Persona may be preparing to rebuild a game from before many of its current fans discovered the series.

Nagoshi Studio is the painful counterexample. Experience, recognizable names and ambitious projects still cannot guarantee survival when the money behind a studio changes direction.

Entertainment loves talking about intellectual property as though franchises simply continue forever. They do not.

They survive because somebody keeps deciding they are worth making again.

This report includes information from: Variety.com, TheHollywoodReporter.com, ABC/Disney-related reporting, TheWrap.com, VGC.com, Gematsu.com, Square Enix-related reporting, People.com and Associated Press-related reporting.

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