INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Netflix flexed its Hollywood star power with a live event where it unveiled details about its upcoming slate of streaming offerings, including Lady Gaga being cast as a teacher on “Wednesday,” and release dates for the final episodes of hits “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things.”
The streaming giant assembled actors including Jenna Ortega, Oscar Isaac, Lee Jung-jae, Drew Starkey, Sofia Carson, Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck for its annual Tudum event Saturday in Inglewood, Calif. Musical performances bookended the show, with Hanumankind opening with “Run It Up” and Gaga closing with a medley and the announcement of her latest acting gig.
The event is named “Tudum” after the audio cue that accompanies the Netflix’s N logo in its trailers and at the start of its programming.
A bloody trailer for the final season of “Squid Game” accompanied the announcement that the show’s third season will begin streaming June 27. The South Korean series about a brutal competition where adults face death while playing children’s games was one of the pandemic’s breakout hits and made an international star of Lee Jung-jae, who became the first Asian man to win an Emmy for best drama actor.
The fifth and final season of “Stranger Things” will be parceled out over the winter holidays, with four episodes dropping Nov. 26, three more on Christmas Day and the series finale premiering New Year’s Eve. A new trailer highlights the history of the Duffer brothers’ nostalgia-soaked sci-fi, which over the past nine years has made stars out of Millie Bobby Brown, Sadie Sink, Joseph Quinn, David Harbour and Finn Wolfhard. The trailer teases a final confrontation with Vecna, concluding with Noah Schnapp’s Will Byers’ character yelling “RUN!”
Netflix unveiled the first six minutes of the second season of “Wednesday,” featuring Ortega’s Wednesday Addams getting a helping hand from Thing as she confronts a serial killer played by Haley Joel Osment. Gaga’s first acting gig since last year’s “Joker: Folie a Deux” will be playing teacher Rosaline Rotwood at Addams’ school Nevermore. The first part of “Wednesday” season 2 lands on Aug. 6, and the second half will be released Sept. 3.
