San Diego’s Bonkers Toys has signed a worldwide, multi-year licensing deal with Invisible Narratives, the digital studio created by Hollywood power brokers.

Under the terms of the agreement, the toy company, according to a news release, will manufacture and distribute toys based on the record-setting animated YouTube series “Skibidi Toilet.”

The partnership between Bonkers Toys and Invisible Narratives, led by former Paramount and Dreamworks SKG President Adam Goodman and Chief Creative Adviser Michael Bay (director of The Rock, Armageddon, films in the Transformers franchise and more), will bring “Skibidi Toilet” toys to major retailers beginning this fall.

The series, created by Alexey Gerasimov (aka Boom), has amassed over 65 billion views since its debut last year.  The sci-fi series chronicles the adventures of an alliance of humanoids with TVs, cameras and speakers for heads in their fight against Skibidi toilets – toilets that aren’t just bathrooms fixtures but living, scheming entities with ambitions of their own.

“‘Skibidi Toilet’ is a pioneer of its kind, the first epically viewed narrative series with all the right ingredients to position it as the next massive franchise,” said Brian Bonnett, CEO of Bonkers Toys. “As a toy company that specializes in non-traditional content that resonates with kids, we are thrilled to work with Michael Bay, Boom and Invisible Narratives to produce toys that capture the ‘Skibidi’ experience for its millions of fans worldwide.”

The upcoming toys, according to the company, “will capture the spirit and humor of the record-setting YouTube series, translating its digital charisma into tangible icons that resonate with a broad international audience.”

Bonkers Toys has become known as a leader in YouTube and creator-based toys, serving as the first licensee for Ryan’s World, with flagship toys including the Giant Mystery Egg & Cap’n Ryan’s Mega Mystery Treasure Chest. Bonkers Toys also has partnered with other top creators, including Lankybox and Aphmau, to create best-selling toy lines.

The success of Denis Villeneuve’s recent adaptations of Frank Herbert’s classic 1965 sci-fi novel Dune is interesting since the tone and atmosphere of the story are rather bleak.

The action and battle sequences are restrained and less flashy than most blockbusters, and the characters aren’t the most endearing. Maybe after a decade of the traditional optimism of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars, audiences are looking for something a bit different in sci-fi entertainment. If so, it appears Dune (2021) and now Dune: Part Two prove that major studio releases can be both exciting and serious.

Beginning where the first movie left off, exiled heir Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) and his mother Lady Jessica (Rebecca Ferguson) lay low with the Freman community while the troops of Paul’s enemy, Baron Bladimir Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgård), are on the hunt for the Fremen. Tribe leader Stilgar (Javier Bardem) believes Paul fits all the signs of the next Messiah to end the global wars between royal houses, while Paul just wants to fight alongside the Fremen to defeat Harkonnen.

Meanwhile, Jessica is pushed into becoming the next reverend mother of the Fremen, while Paul finds love with wary soldier Chani (Zendaya), and Harkonnen’s unhinged nephew Feyd-Rautha (Austin Butler) is up for challenging Paul to a fatal duel. Florence Pugh, Josh Brolin, Dave Bautista, Charlotte Rampling, Léa Seydoux and Christopher Walken round out the all-star cast.

While the first part of Dune got an impressive reception amidst the pandemic plus a dual streaming release, Part Two is already predicted to be the first big hit of 2024. It says a lot that viewers are interested in watching the arc of a protagonist who is essentially the anti-Neo or anti-Luke Skywalker. He’s reluctant to become a leader, and when he does take up the position, it’s out of revenge more than the greater good. Paul is probably the closest to an anti-hero a major franchise can get.

Naturally, there have been accusations the movie is anti-religion as well as evoking Islam, i.e. the fictional foreign language spoken between the characters sounds Arabic inspired. But I think Herbert, Villeneuve and co-screenwriter Jon Spaihts might actually be saying something deeper than just “religion is bad,” and maybe suggesting you can’t force someone to be the Chosen One. It can only happen organically. 

Part Two concludes with an open ending, following reports of Villeneuve and company planning to return to adapt Herbert’s 1969 followup novel, Dune: Messiah. In general, the Dune series leaves me a bit cold narratively and I don’t find many of the characters very intriguing.

But the second part of the initial story visually does have much more action and choreography compared to the dialogue-heavy first one, and the cast is fantastic. So it sounds like after the lackluster initial 1984 adaptation by David Lynch, longtime fans of Herbert finally have the most appropriate filmmaker to bring the epic tales to life on screen.

When she was a child, San Diegan S.G. Blaise dreamed of far-away lands and fantastical realms.

Nowadays, she gets to create strange lands, magical galaxies and rebellious heroes. Blaise has become a successful, award-winning sci-fi/fantasy author who sometimes gets her inspiration from the beaches of her hometown San Diego.

Blaise was one of the main attractions of the 36th WonderCon pop culture conference held in Anaheim last weekend. 

It was her second appearance at the event, and she took center stage with one of the most elaborate displays in the conference’s exhibit hall.

The display featured a recreation of a crashed spaceship, videos touting her books and a live cosplay performance reenacting a scene from her “The Last Lumenian” series.

The series is a sci-fi fantasy and action adventure about a princess who joins a rebellion to save oppressed refugees and discovers she has magical powers. Romance complicates her life when she meets a powerful general and a handsome rebel pilot.

The series has earned positive reviews. Four books have already been published, and a fifth one is coming out in December.

Considering how she grew up, telling tales of rebellion and fantasy is personal for Blaise.

She was raised in Hungary under oppression by the old Soviet Union. Her father would smuggle in Hollywood movies and even translate and use his own voice to dub the movies. 

“We had movie night every Sunday,” she said.

From there, she developed a love for sci-fi and fantasy films. She recalled wanting to be a writer at a young age after she read a story she wrote in class and got a positive reaction. Her life experiences led her to write “The Last Lumenian.”

“I cannot separate my own background and experiences from being an author,” she said. “When the story came to me, it was natural that she’s going to be a rebel, she’s going to always fight oppression, fight for the freedom of innocents and protect the innocents who can’t protect themselves.”

Later, after her father passed away, she was able to flee Europe and make it to America, first in Boston and then eventually settling with her husband in San Diego, near Rancho Bernardo.

San Diego provides plenty of inspiration for Blaise.

“If I’m stuck, which I tend to be not a lot, I love going to the ocean, to La Jolla, to drive around and do a road trip,” she said. “There’s always something more to discover in San Diego. I still have more to discover.”

Blaise is looking forward to the publication of the fifth book in the “Lumenian” series later this year.

And she’s planning on a new nine-book series and another series featuring seven books.

But that’s to come later. Last weekend, she spent her time at WonderCon autographing books and meeting with her fans.

She is hoping to bring her elaborate spaceship display to Comic-Con in San Diego this summer.

“It’s not just about promotion,” said Blaise. “It’s about sharing the love of sci-fi and fantasy with my readers. It’s the most amazing feeling to see people’s eyes go wide, the biggest smile on their face.”

The first-ever exhibit showcasing the life and writing of science fiction author Octavia Butler opens this month at The New Children’s Museum in downtown San Diego on March 9th.

The exhibit, Octavia Butler: Seeding Futures, focuses on the work and early experiences of the MacArthur fellow and the first Black woman author to win widespread acclaim in the field of science and speculative fiction in the United States.

Butler’s works featured themes of change, upheaval, love, and identity. One of her best-known books, 1993’s Parable of the Sower, opens in the year 2024 and focuses on a world changed beyond recognition by climate change and politics, and the hope that allows humanity to harness change.

The exhibit, which is intended for visitors of all ages, will feature Butler’s childhood and experiences growing up in her native southern California and how living in the Los Angeles area shaped her work. It also will feature murals by collaborating artist Mithsuca Berry.

Many of Butler’s works focused on the concept of change. To that end, this exhibit will focus on ways of thriving in community, as well as how to positively shape and be shaped by the future.

“The exhibition taps into what Butler would have called her ‘positive obsession’ planted in the fertile ground of the museum,” said advising curator Dr. Ayana Jamieson, advising curator to the exhibit and founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network.

“We are thrilled and excited to share the beauty and ingenuity of Butler’s life and legacy with more audiences.”

The exhibit will be presented at The New Children’s Museum through late 2025.

“Our hope is that Octavia E. Butler: Seeding Futures will not only inspire more programming but also be a space where youth of all backgrounds and identities see themselves reflected and are inspired to create their own stories,” said Gabrielle Wyrick, chief curator at The New Children’s Museum.

“We are honored to have the opportunity to celebrate Octavia E. Butler’s legacy in a way that we hope would live up to her vision of community.”

She has won numerous awards and worked on high-profile projects, but as she previewed an exhibit of her works at the Comic-Con Museum Tuesday, artist Colleen Doran couldn’t help but marvel at how far she and her industry have come.

“We didn’t see that coming back in the day,” said Doran. “We were considered junk culture…To go from that to this, is amazing.”

“Colleen Doran Illustrates Neil Gaiman” is one of three new exhibits that open Wednesday at the museum located in Balboa Park.

Doran has worked on projects ranging from The Walking Dead to Wonder Woman, but the exhibit features her original art for stories by legendary writer Gaiman.

The art includes works from Gaiman’s famous The Sandman comic book and from other works including Chivalry, Troll Bridge, American Gods and Good Omens.

Doran has known Gaiman since 1989 and acknowledges his literary works can be challenging to translate visually, even thinking early on that she wasn’t a good enough artist to work with the author and having to change her style.

“To me, being a cartoonist is like being an actor and every book is a different role,” she said.

The exhibit includes art in both color and black and white. It also features a video of Gaiman performing a public reading of Chivalry, a fantasy about an elderly British widow who buys what turns out to be the Holy Grail, which brings forth a visit an ancient knight.

The other new exhibits at the museum are:

Popnology: The largest exhibit in the museum takes up most of the ground floor and highlights how technology has been influenced by movies, books, television, art and futurists. It traces how the stuff of science fiction, like how Star Trek communicators, eventually become reality, like the cell phones of today.

The exhibit has several interactive displays where people can operate a robot, see how radio sounds travel through space or pilot a ship on Mars. There is also a quiz about robots, displays about 3D printing, a look at the evolution of Artificial Intelligence and even a comparison on how science was used to confront the challenge of a modern pandemic.

From Big Dots to the Digital Universe: The Evolution of Comic Book Color: This exhibit looks at how the use of color in comic books has evolved over the decades from hand-painted works to digital formats.

Longtime colorist Steve Oliff and his contributions to such works as Akira, Batman and Spawn are highlighted in the exhibit. The exhibit also includes an interactive display showing how color separation is used to bring vibrancy to a comic book.

Oliff calls coloring the “silent soundtrack” to comic books, adding “I wanted this show to be very educational.”

Filmmaker Wes Anderson’s latest epic ensemble piece Asteroid City is exactly the kind of light, fun and entertaining movie to life one’s spirits. It sure lifted mine.

As Anderson fans and movie viewers have noticed, the man is at a point in his career where his ambition has no limit, and he’s not afraid to take full advantage of his resources.

He succeeded in creating an epic period dramedy with The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), but stumbled a bit with the retro anthology The French Dispatch (2021). Now, he returns with another star-studded cast in a pastiche of mid-20th century whimsey.

As the trailers lead on, Asteroid City mainly revolves around Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman), a war photographer and single father of four kids, and Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson), a movie star with a 15-year-old daughter, Dinah (Grace Edwards). They’re stuck in Asteroid City, Nevada, while Dinah and Augie’s teenage son Woodrow (Jake Ryan) compete in the Junior Stargazer Awards for kids involved with astronomy.

During the convention, a real alien encounter becomes imminent and government agents are revealed to be secretly operating behind the motel where the characters are staying. Various supporting roles include Augie’s father-in-law Stanley (Tom Hanks), Junior Stargazer host Gen. Grif Gibson (Jeffrey Wright), local scientist Dr. Hickenlooper (Tilda Swinton), schoolteacher June Douglas (Maya Hawke), cowboy Montana (Rupert Friend) and Steve Carell as the motel manager.

What isn’t included in Asteroid City’s marketing is that the desert and sci-fi elements of the movie are actually an old-school teleplay being played out by actors and a TV crew in 1955. Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Bryan Cranston and Margot Robbie make appearances during these behind-the-scenes sequences, which are cleverly subverted in B&W cinematography, while the TV plot scenes are in color.

What else can you say about a high-quality Wes Anderson flick at this point? When he’s on fire, he’s on fire. While his latest efforts can feel a bit bloated, especially compared to his modest roots of Bottle Rocket (1996) and Rushmore (1998), he has really mastered the art of coining multi-layered colorful personalities. He’s now openly prioritizing atmosphere and both character and performance over plot, and that isn’t always bad.

Asteroid City is a tongue-in-cheek, non-linear satire on his own industry while also paying homage, like usual. It’s nice to see his longtime regular actor, Schwartzman, take the lead again, and Johansson fits in quite nicely in Anderson’s twee world. Although it was reported Carell replaced another Anderson regular, Bill Murray, it was actually Hanks’ presence that reminded me more of Murray’s usual casting.

Though I think there were aspects in the film that could have been expanded more, such as the desert going under quarantine being reminiscent of the real COVID quarantine three years ago, Asteroid City is near perfect eye candy for those who appreciate the cinema of Anderson.

It’s changed locations, adapted to major shifts in customer habits and survived a pandemic. And on Saturday, a popular San Diego bookstore celebrates its 30th anniversary.

Mysterious Galaxy, an independent bookstore that specializes in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, young adult, romance and horror books, will hold a 30th birthday bash at its location on Rosecrans Street, in the Midway District.

The event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and includes authors, panel discussions, children’s readings, giveaways, a scavenger hunt and, of course, a cake.

For co-owner Matt Berger, the anniversary is very much worthy of a celebration considering the challenges the store has faced over the years.

“Thirty years for any small business, let alone a book store, is huge,” said Berger.

The store opened on May 8, 1993, and over the years, it has been in four different locations. Four years ago, it faced eviction and closure at its last site. Enter Berger and his wife, Jenni Marchisotto, who had been frequent customers of the store and didn’t want to see it close.

They decided to buy it, becoming in effect the guardians of the Galaxy.

The store had already weathered the seismic shift in book buying that saw shoppers nationwide flock to Amazon and other web sites.

Then, several weeks after Berger and his wife became owners, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, forcing them to rely on online sales and even starting a gofundme campaign to raise money. That campaign is still active today.

Berger said Mysterious Galaxy has succeeded by creating a place where book lovers can gather. The store regularly hosts events, including author signings, discussions and book club meetings.

“Reading is a very solitary thing to do most of the time,” Berger said. “Being able to go to a bookstore where people are excited about the same book you read, that is a pretty rare thing.”

Berger also credits his knowledgeable staff who can offer more personal recommendations than an online site can.

“We have amazing, passionate book sellers,” he said. “You’ll be able to connect with them and find something new.”

Berger said there will always be a place for Mysterious Galaxy.

“How people read and where they get their books has changed a lot in these 30 years, but people’s love of books is still there,” he said.

Unlike Valérie Lemercier’s Aline, which was crazy in the worst possible ways, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once is crazy in the best possible ways.

After months of built-up hype and anticipation from fans of Kwan and Scheinert (also known professionally by the Daniels moniker), I can safely confirm the wild, trippy, colorful, out-of-this-world, sci-fi epic lives up to expectations.

One of the most original films to come out this season holds its own with completely original characters played by mostly character actors. Everything Everywhere reminds viewers that with the right minds and teams of people in the cast and crew, anything is possible in cinema.

In modern Simi Valley, 50-something Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) is not having a good day. Her elderly father (James Hong) is visiting America after years of ignoring her, Evelyn’s husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), and their daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu). Evelyn and Waymond’s local laundromat is on the verge of being audited, Waymond secretly wants a divorce and Evelyn is in denial that Joy is a lesbian.

Before anything could get any worse, Waymond suddenly hands Evelyn a set of random instructions and a small pair of headphones which—quite literally—rock her world. Jamie Lee Curtis co-stars as the IRS agent scheduled to meet with the Wang family, while Jenny Slate and Harry Shum Jr. appear in amusing roles.

Alternate universes and time travel are very tricky to pull off in fiction, especially parallel multi-universes. But the Daniels totally succeed with Everything Everywhere, and were smart to keep the universes always somewhat relevant to Evelyn’s life or past, even in the craziest scenarios.

Yeoh is perfect lead casting from her action star background to knowing multiple languages to appearing glamorous to being portrayed as both ordinary and extraordinary. Quan, whom most last saw four decades ago in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones & the Temple of Doom (1984) and Richard Donner’s The Goonies (1985), is now back on the big screen in a wonderful way.

Right away we see that Quan’s potential and charm as a child actor weren’t flukes, and he can still carry a scene in his first substantial, grown-up role. And just like Yeoh, Quan shows off his own impressive martial arts choreography training many times in Everything Everywhere.

The Daniels are the same duo who gave us Swiss Army Man (2016), or “the farting corpse movie,” as it’s sometimes referred to, and many bizarrely fascinating music videos, most famously DJ Snake’s “Turn Down for What” (2014). With Everything Everywhere, we get their talents spread wide and far.

They’re twice as wacky as the Coen Brothers, but just as accessible to an audience. Besides the impressive special effects, fast editing, absurd humor, unusual twists and wild narrative, we also get one of the most effective and hilarious fake endings in recent memory.

If there’s one thing to slightly pick with Everything Everywhere, it’s that the Daniels—like most talented filmmakers—could trust their editor a little bit more. While still a great screen experience, the pacing and length of the feature could also have easily been tightened by omitting 15-20 minutes.

Nonetheless, it’s one of the most original, entertaining, strangest, unforgettable movies in theaters right now and also turns into a surprisingly touching mother-daughter tale. Definitely see Everything Everywhere All at Once.

For the second year in a row, San Diego’s sprawling, massive Comic-Con is transforming into an online only event because of a pandemic that has died down, but refused to go away.

This year’s Comic-Con@Home runs July 23-25 and it’s loaded with panels on pop culture favorites, interviews with actors, authors and creators, and exhibitors selling toys, merchandise and other items online.

Comic-Con organizers announced in April that an in-person Con will be postponed until July 2022. However, they are planning a smaller event called Comic-Con Special Edition. If conditions permit, the smaller event will be held November 26-28.

For now, however, Comic-Con@Home will have to do for fans.

Here’s a rundown of some of the highlights. For dates and times of the panels, visit www.comic-con.org. And if you miss the live broadcast of a panel, you’ll be able to watch it later on Comic-Con’s YouTube channel.

Television

The glut of streaming entertainment services has been a bonanza for fans, with shows for all kinds of individual tastes. Shows that used to pack that cavernous Hall H at the San Diego Convention Center will instead pack your couch this week.

High-profile shows being highlighted include zombie adventure “The Walking Dead,” which is entering its last year. Cast and creators will take part in a Q&A discussion about filming the final season and show a trailer for the upcoming season.

Other popular shows being featured include “Bob’s Burgers,” “Rick and Morty” and “Doctor Who.”

Film

Studios are starting to release films in theaters again but it is happening slowly and that’s reflected at Comic-Con, where only a handful of studios are participating. Opening night features a look at the newest entry in the G.I. Joe film series, “Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins,” which takes a look at the most popular Joe, the mysterious ninja warrior.

San Diegans

Comic-Con has increasingly put the spotlight on local San Diegans who are involved in pop culture and this year is no different.

San Diego’s own Masked Republic, a lucha libre event, merchandising and media company, will be featured at two panels, “Video Games, Art and Mexican Culture” and “Not-So-Strange Bedfellows: The Relationship between Comics and Professional Wrestling.” Both panels are on Friday.

Sandra Scheller, an author and thecreator of “RUTH Remember Us The Holocaust,” an exhibit at the main Chula Vista library, will participate in “Art and the Holocaust — The Art of Holocaust Survivor Dr. Viktor Frankl.”

Panels Off the Beaten Patch

While many fans crowd panels for popular movies and shows, some of the most fascinating Comic-Con discussions come at the smaller, more unusual panels.

In “This is the Law: Judges on the Mandalorian,” Four distinguished judges will discuss legal questions raised by the bounty hunting protagonist of Disney’s popular “The Mandalorian.”

Meanwhile, scientists from NASA and Pasadena’s JPL will swap stories of problems they’ve encountered in real life trying to land and fly spacecraft on Mars in the panel “No Tow Trucks Beyond Mars.”

Meanwhile, Balboa Park’s Fleet Science Center has organized a panel called “The Science of Star Wars,” featuring scientists explaining the real-life science behind the Star Wars films.

Luis Monteagudo Jr. is a freelance writer and pop culture enthusiast. He has written for The San Diego Union-Tribune, USA Today and numerous other publications.

By Megan Bianco

For the past three decades, the famous movie characters known as simply “Bill and Ted” have endeared both original and new-generation fans of their sci-fi comedies.

What began as Stephen Herek’s Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure in 1989 might have been considered a lesser knockoff of Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future (1985), but grew to hold its own as a cult classic. The sleeper hit had the time travel logic of Future, combined with the tone of a John Hughes teen flick—not in the least, Weird Science (1985).

When a sequel was greenlit only two years later, the follow-up could have very easily gone the way of most sequels to popular goofy comedies a la Caddyshack 2 (1988) or any of the Airplane! (1980) sequels, i.e. not good and incredibly unfunny. But instead of being redundant or lazy, Pete Hewitt’s Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991) went in the complete opposite direction and became bizarrely entertaining and surprisingly existential.

Now, nearly thirty years later and a decade in the making, a third installment is upon us in the form of Dean Parisot’s Bill & Ted Face the Music.

After their first two adventures—which included a time-traveling phone booth, meeting some of the world’s biggest historical figures, and visiting the afterlife—Bill Preston (Alex Winter) and Ted Logan (Keanu Reeves) are now middle-aged, out-of-work and each on the verge of divorce. Just when the lifelong BFFs are at a loss as to what to do, Kelly (Kristen Schaal), the daughter of their former time-travel mentor Rufus (previously played by George Carlin), randomly pops up to inform Bill and Ted that they need to save the universe by composing the greatest song ever written.

So now, 29 years after Bogus Journey was released, how does Face the Music compare to its previous successors? Well, I think it might depend on the viewer. As someone who was never a big Bill and Ted buff growing up, with my first viewing of Excellent Adventure being in high school and my intro to Bogus Journey only recently in preparation for the new film, I was just fine with Face the Music.

What’s great about these movies is that not only do Reeves and Winter consistently return as the leads, but so do the original screenwriters, Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson. Face the Music has all the same themes, atmosphere, characteristics and spirit of the originals, making this a rare instance where a sequel produced over a decade later isn’t along the lines of Zoolander 2 (2016).

Bill and Ted’s latest odyssey will be most appreciated by the series’ fans, but probably by some new viewers as well. If there’s one thing that didn’t fully work for me, it’s that I didn’t laugh out loud at any point on first viewing as I did with Excellent Adventure and Bogus Journey, except for maybe the post-credits bonus scene.

This new epic romp isn’t exactly mind blowing or brilliant, but it’s amusing enough to end the driest summer movie season in history.

Megan Bianco is a Southern California-based movie reviewer and content writer with a degree from California State University Northridge.