New to Amazon Prime Video in January

December 21, 2020 0 Comments

The latest adaptation of Stephen King’s epic The Stand will premiere next month on Amazon Prime Video.

The nine-part series is streaming on CBS All-Access in the US but Amazon has the NZ and Australian rights (view trailer here).

It opens five months after a bioengineered super flu strain, developed by the US military, has wiped out more than 99 percent of the world’s population, leaving mere hundreds of survivors to try and start their lives over.

The fate of mankind rests on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) and a handful of survivors. Their worst nightmares are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgård), the Dark Man. In this post-apocalyptic world, there is the good and a deep wall darkness. People must choose and take a stand.

King’s written a new coda to close this version of The Stand, which will stream from January 15.

Reviews were mixed, with the New York Times declaring: “It’s a reasonably skilled and unobjectionable job of transcription and compression, stutter-stepping among time lines to keep track of King’s manifold plot strands and characters.”

The Washington Post thought it worked “better as a study in survivalist pluck than as a theological thunderdome” while Variety argued “this adaptation of one of Stephen King’s most dense, sprawling works never quite reaches the epic scope illustrated so clearly in the 1978 novel”.

Amazon’s also picked up the animated Star Trek: Lower Decks (view trailer here).

Developed by Rick and Morty’s Mike McMahan, it focuses on the support crew serving on one of Starfleet’s least important ships, the U.S.S. Cerritos, in 2380.

All 10 episodes will stream from January 18.

Back for its third season from January 11 will be a hopefully much improved American Gods, albeit without Orlando Jones, whose character is one of several that have been ditched. (View trailer here.)

Reads the blurb:

Shadow Moon angrily pushes this apparent destiny away, and settles in the idyllic snowy town of Lakeside, Wisconsin — to make his own path, guided by the gods of his black ancestors, the Orishas. But he’ll soon discover that this town’s still waters run deep, and dark, and bloody, and that you don’t get to simply reject being a god. The only choice — and a choice you have to make — is what kind of god you’re going to be.

Also new will be the original movies One Night in Miami (January 15) and The Rental (January 22).

The former is a Regina King-directed fictional account of four ’60s icons gathering to celebrate one of the biggest upsets in boxing history: Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge). (View trailer here.)

The latter is a thriller about two couples on an oceanside getaway grow suspicious that the host of their seemingly perfect rental house may be spying on them. Alison Brie, Dan Stevens, Jeremy Allen White and Sheila Vand star. (View trailer here.)

Also new will be: