“Moana 2,” the third-biggest movie box-office hit of 2024, and Amanda Seyfried playing a Philadelphia patrol officer fighting rampant opioid addiction in Peacock’s “Long Bright River” are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you.
Also among the streaming offerings worth your time as selected by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists: A long-lost documentary resurfaces on Tom Petty, comedian John Mulaney launches a live weekly celebrity talk show on Netflix and a six-part series called “Confessions of Octomom” looks back at the turbulent life of single mom Nadya Suleman.
– “Moana 2” was nearly a streaming series. Instead, it arrives Wednesday on Disney+ after more than $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales. The movie, the third-biggest box-office hit of 2024, is set three years after the 2016 original. Moana (Auli’i Cravalho) again sets sail from her home island, this time in search of a wider community of Pacific Islanders. Dwayne Johnson, as the voice of Maui, is also back. In my review, I wrote that “the warm Polynesian spirit and open-sea sense of adventure is back in ‘Moana 2,’ but little of the original’s humor or catchy songs finds its way into this heartfelt but lackluster sequel.”
— Directors Anthony and Joe Russo (“Avengers: Endgame”) are back on Netflix with their adaptation of Simon Stalenhag’s 2018 illustrated novel “The Electric State.” The Russos, who last released 2022’s “The Gray Man” on the streaming service, bring their big-budget flare to a retro-futuristic tale populated by cartoon-like robots. Millie Bobby Brown stars as a teenager in search of her long-lost brother, who travels the American southwest with Keats (Chris Pratt) and his robot sidekick, Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie).
– Payal Kapadia’s luminous “All We Imagine as Light” begins streaming on the Criterion Channel. The film, one of the most acclaimed of 2024, is about three Mumbai hospital workers — played by Kani Kusruti, Divya Prabha and Chhaya Kadam — who are each grappling with different constrictions in modern Mumbai. When they travel to a seaside town, “All We Imagine as Light” transforms into a radiant, illusary imagination of the lives they could have. In her review, AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr wrote, “Like a dream, this is a film that washes over you.”
— In 2022, the K-pop girl group LE SSERAFIM emerged fully-formed: An ambitious Gen Z quintet whose hooks who helped usher in a new wave of such groups. It was their single “ANTIFRAGILE” that seemed to suggest a new sound was being popularized: They pulled from reggaetón filtered through Rosalía as much as they did the tentpoles of much K-pop: stacked melodies, R&B, hip-hop, EDM. On Friday, they will release a new EP, “HOT,” its title-track promising further combinations of “rock and disco elements, revolving around love,” their agency Source Music said in a statement. It’s enough to get excited about.
— In February 1983, “Tom Petty: Heartbreakers Beach Party” aired just once on MTV — a long-lost documentary that doubles as Cameron Crowe’s true directorial debut. It follows Petty and his Heartbreakers around their 1982 “Long After Dark” album. The film has been found and remastered, and on Tuesday, will premiere on Paramount+.
— AP Music Writer Maria Sherman
— In 2009, the world was introduced to Nadya Suleman, a single mom of six who gave birth to eight living children at one time via in vitro fertilization. The public fascination into this woman dubbed Octomom quickly became vicious and judgmental. Suleman had no job and relied on government assistance, so she was declared irresponsible and unfit to raise 14 kids. She did capitalize on the attention with a book deal, tabloid deals and paid TV appearances but within a few years she’d declared bankruptcy, turned to pornography to earn money and was accused of welfare fraud by the state of California. A new six-part series called “Confessions of Octomom” looks back at that turbulent time and how Suleman and her 14 kids made it through. It debuts Wednesday on Lifetime and streams on Hulu live.
— Comedian John Mulaney launches a live weekly celebrity talk show on Netflix called “Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney” on Wednesday. It’s a follow-up to “John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in LA” a live nightly show during last year’s Netflix is a Joke comedy festival. Richard Kind returns as the sidekick. At a press event earlier this year to promote Netflix’s 2025 programming, Maloney promised, “We will never be relevant. We will never be your source of news. We will always be reckless.”
— Amanda Seyfried, who won an Emmy Award in 2022 for portraying former Silicon Valley It Girl, Elizabeth Holmes, stars in a new thriller series for Peacock. In “Long Bright River,” Seyfried plays Mickey, a Philadelphia patrol officer in a neighborhood plagued by rampant opioid addiction. Mickey becomes determined to solve a series of murders when her sister, who is also an addict, goes missing. It’s based on a novel by Liz Moore. The eight-episode series launches Thursday.
— A different limited series for Apple TV+ called “Dope Thief” is also set in Philadelphia against the world of drugs. Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura star as two longtime friends who pose as DEA agents and conduct fake raids to take possession of other people’s drugs and money. It’s a series of easy scores until the two men target the wrong people. “Dope Thief,” produced by Ridley Scott, begins streaming Friday, March 14.
— Video games love to make you feel like a hero, but what happens to warriors who fail? Alta, the protagonist of Wanderstop, takes a job managing a quiet tea shop in a magical forest. That sounds like the setup for a relaxing, “cozy” game like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley — but be warned, one of its creators is Davey Wreden, the mastermind behind 2013’s The Stanley Parable. That cult classic is one of the most devious brain-twisters ever, so who knows what Wreden and his colleagues at Ivy Road have up their sleeves for their indie studio’s debut release? Judging from the trailer, Alta may have more on her mind than creating the perfect cup. Find out what’s brewing Tuesday on PlayStation 5, Xbox X/S and PC.
