It’s Geeked Week over at Netflix, which means the updates are bountiful. Already we’ve gotten the first full trailer and release date for The Sandman as well as an announcement that Mark Hamill is joining the show’s cast as Merv Pumpkinhead. Then there’s the news that Shadow and Bone season 2 has wrapped filming. Beyond that, we’ve got trailers, teasers, and hints galore.
Yesterday the event took a heavier focus on Netflix’s animated offerings, starting with one of their most successful animated hits.
Arcane: Bridging the Rift behind-the-scenes documentary announced
When it comes to Netflix’s animated shows, Arcane is one of the biggest. Season 1 of the series released on the streaming platform last year and gained a ton of acclaim for its inventive visual style and compelling storytelling. It’s even more impressive when you consider that Arcane is based on a video game — League of Legends by Riot Games — yet somehow managed to avoid the curse that normally lingers over those sorts of adaptations. Arcane wasn’t just a good video game show, it was a good show in general.
Now, Netflix and Riot Games are bringing us behind the scenes to see how the series was made. Per Polygon, the new documentary Arcane: Bridging the Rift will primarily focus on Riot Games’ working relationship with Fortiche Productions, the French animation studio that created Arcane. Riot and Fortiche have been working together since 2014, when they teamed up for the “Get Jinxed” music video that served as the character’s introduction to the League of Legends fandom. After the success of Arcane, Riot Games invested significantly in Fortiche to bring them on as a full partner.
Despite being produced by Netflix, Arcane: Bridging the Rift will premiere exclusively on YouTube. The five-part documentary series will air weekly, with its first installment dropping on August 4. No release date was announced for Arcane season 2, which remains in production.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners gets teaser and release date
Sticking to the video game adaptation space, next up we’ve got Cyberpunk: Edgerunners. This one is based on the Cyberpunk 2077 video game from CD Projekt Red, which itself is based on the 1988 tabletop role-playing game Cyberpunk 2020. We’ve known for a while now that Edgerunners was on the way, but during Geeked Week Netflix dropped the first teaser for the series, which also unveiled a release window.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is a 10-part standalone anime series being produced by Studio Trigger (Kill la Kill, Promare). Per Dual Shockers, the series will follow a street kid named David as he struggles to survive in Night City, a sci-fi metropolis built on corruption and obsessed with body modification. With everything to lose, David will be forced to become a mercenary known as an edgerunner, or cyberpunk, and do whatever it takes to get the job done as he carves out a place for himself in Night City’s criminal underworld. Along the way, he’ll cross paths with Lucy, a fellow edgerunner whose familiarity with the seedy underbelly of Night City keeps her a step ahead of the competition.
Cyberpunk 2077 had a rocky release initially, but the world that it’s set in was vibrantly realized. It’s always felt like a setting primed for more stories, and from this first teaser it looks like the leap to anime might be a perfect fit. CD Projekt Red is co-producing this series with Netflix and Trigger. The game studio developed the story for the series, with Masahiko Otsuka (Star Wars: Visions “The Elder”) and Yoshiki Usa (Gridman Universe) penning the screenplay.
CD Projekt Red released a behind-the-scenes look at the series to accompany Netflix’s announcement. It included the world premiere of a scene from the show’s fourth episode where David, Lucy, and their companions face down a cybernetically enhanced gang known as Maelstrom. It also gives us our first look at one of David’s particular bits of cyberware that gives him a leg up in Night City; it’s known as Sandevistan, and it infuses his body with adrenaline in order to give him super-human speed, strength, and senses.
“It fulfills a quite different role than the game, because in a video game it’s all about the immersion and the power fantasy of being in Night City,” said showrunner and executive producer Rafal Jaki. “Where, for the show, we explore things and topics that were not possible in that specific experience of a video game.”
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners is slated to hit Netflix in September 2022. Arcane: Bridging the Rift airs weekly on YouTube beginning on August 4.
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