Five years after the first film came out, a misshapen action fantasy follow-up arrives with a baffling cliffhanger ending

Even with our thick-of-Covid desperation for anything that felt big at a time when life felt too small, there was more to The Old Guard than the average churned out Netflix mockbuster. Released in the hell of July 2020, it came with the requisite boxes ticked (big star, international locations, franchisable setup) but felt closer to the real thing than most, proving to be a hit for those eager for escapism, scoring one of the streamer’s biggest launches to date.

But like many Netflix films, its cultural impact was negligible, popular for a weekend or three but failing to live on in any notable way after, consumed with speed and forgotten at a similar pace. A sequel was inevitable yet unnecessary, and while one was given a green light at the start of 2021 and started production in 2022, it’s taken another three years to see the light of day. Not only does The Old Guard 2 bear the bruises of such a cursed post-production process but it’s also weakened by such a distance from the first, forcing us to remember something most of us had resigned to the ether (it’s telling that to promote the sequel, Netflix has recruited its stars to recap the first film).

Final season of the smash series scores a new record for the streaming platform in the first three days

The third and final season of the hit Korean series Squid Game has broken records to become the biggest-ever TV launch for Netflix.

Over its first three days, the series racked up more than 60.1m views, a new high for the streamer, with more than 368.4m hours viewed. The second season launched with 68m views but over a four-day period last December.

This summer has 28 Days Later, I Know What You Did Last Summer and The Karate Kid franchises coming back to life but what should come next?

The Thin Man series should not be rebooted so much as remixed, shaken a little and strained into crystal coupes. These glamorous 1930s capers starred the debonair duo of William Powell and Myrna Loy as frisky husband-and-wife sleuths Nick and Nora Charles, who solve crimes while cracking wise and necking cocktails, accompanied by their precocious wire fox terrier Asta. There were six films in the original run, starting with 1934’s The Thin Man, an adaptation of the Dashiell Hammett novel of the same name, and ending in 1947. The perfect recipe for a new Thin Man film would comprise two charismatic movie stars with sizzling chemistry, the kind who look stunning in evening dress, but who can also ad lib their own gags, a cavalcade of plot twists and saucy co-stars, a happy ending, and of course a scene-stealing pooch. It’s good, old-fashioned fun, but that’s why it’s so timeless, and a formula that can run and run – until the ice bucket is empty. Pamela Hutchinson

British actor-director joins Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci for a long-awaited follow-up to the comedy hit

Kenneth Branagh is joining the original cast of The Devil Wears Prada for the much-anticipated sequel which begins filming this week.

The actor-writer-director will play the husband of Meryl Streep’s vicious fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly. Streep returns along with Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

A solidly made and passably entertaining follow-up to the viral doll hit tries to swerve the franchise into summer blockbuster territory with mixed results

As the very first image of devil doll sequel M3gan 2.0 emerges on screen, of a desert with the words “somewhere on the Turkish-Iranian border” popping up like it’s a Bond movie, you’d be forgiven for double-checking if you’re in the right cinema.

The original, a grabby artificial intelligence (AI) riff on Child’s Play and Annabelle, was a brisk, by-the-numbers domestic horror, released on the first weekend of 2023, a slot usually given to the very worst genre films. M3gan was smarter than most, often sly and frequently funny and introducing what’s now become a rarity, an almost instant non-IP pop culture icon, whose virality exploded the film into a surprise smash (raking in over $180m from a $12m budget). Like the films it was inspired by, a franchise was inevitable although where we’re taken in M3gan 2.0 was far less of a given. For the follow-up, writer-director Gerard Johnstone has swerved from horror to action while retaining and tweaking the comedy with a release date that’s been upgraded to summer blockbuster territory. It doesn’t always work – a two-hour runtime that’s a little too long, world-saving stakes that are a little too big, funny lines that are a little too not funny – but it’s a mostly watchable second-tier event movie that, in a world of inconsequential sequels that fail to justify their existence, will do.