Trailers of the week: Spielberg’s Masters of the Air, new Reacher, Avatar and more

We get bombarded with teasers, trailers and promotional clips relentlessly – each weekend Steve Newall sorts through the best of the week for you to check out and get excited about. 

Masters of the Air

Band of Brothers and The Pacific producers Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman bring another aspect of WWII to the screen with Masters of the Air. Austin Butler leads this upcoming series following the 100th Bomb Group and its airmen as they conduct raids over Nazi Germany that prove dangerous and deadly to both foes on the ground—and comrades in the skies. Series directors include Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck (Captain Marvel), Cary Joji Fukunaga (No Time to Die), Dee Rees (Mudbound) and Tim Van Patten (Boardwalk Empire).

Inside Out 2

2015’s Inside Out brought to life the complex internal life of a child, and now as they turn 13 everything’s about to get a heck of a lot more complicated. With the puberty alarm sounding, and an unexpected remodeling of their HQ, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust are surprised by the sudden arrival of a new emotion—Anxiety. And, from the sounds of things, they are not alone…

Reacher

Jack Reacher (Prime Video’s hulking, built-like-a-brick-shithouse version as opposed to the one whose real-life initials are T and C) is back for another season of brutal-looking mayhem. Season two of Reacher sees someone torturing and killing members of the 110th, an elite group of Army Special Investigators that was Jack’s former unit. Cue fistfights, gunfire, a rocket launcher, drowning someone in concrete, and Reacher kicking… a car.

Slow Horses

Apple TV+’s excellent, darkly comic, espionage series returns, with Gary Oldman’s revolting Jackson Lamb and his coterie of failed secret agents once more thrown into a national security catatrophe-in-the-making. Their HQ may have been where there careers were sent to die among the awful odours of Lamb’s ciggies, socks, takeaways and farts—now all of Slough House may be in jeopardy, as well as MI5 itself.

Mean Girls

A new take on the twenty-year-old classic, 2024’s Mean Girls is the film adaptation of the Mean Girls stage musical, which in turn was adapted from the 2004 movie, which itself was adapted from a book. Angourie Rice is Cady Heron, encountering popular girl clique The Plastics at her new high school, and a supporting cast that includes Jon Hamm, Jenna Fischer, and Busy Philipps, with Tina Fey and Tim Meadows—back as their characters from the original film.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

When summertime New York freezes over in a matter of minutes, it’s not The Day After Tomorrow but a sequel to Ghostbusters requel Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Ghostbusters old and new have reunited in the Big Apple, but “the death chill” has also arrived, freezing people to death and heralding a new occult ice age orchestrated by some spooky-looking entity teased in the trailer. Hey, Paul Rudd seems impressed.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

A new live-action take based on the popular Nickelodeon animated show of the same name comes to Netflix in February, with Creamerie/Shadow in the Cloud director Roseanne Liang among the exec producers and episode directors. Awakening in a wartorn world after being frozen for a hundred years, young avatar Aang seeks to master his powers over the elements, and stop the militaristic Fire Nation from taking over the world…

Echo

Marvel’s new show, a spinoff from Hawkeye, sees Maya Lopez aka Echo, head back home to Oklahoma where she must come to terms with her past, reconnect with her Native American roots, and embrace her family and community. And, being a Marvel show, tangling with Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin (and the returning Charlie Cox as Daredevil).