Gugu Mbatha-Raw

When did ‘God Particle’ become a Cloverfield movie? Here’s what it’s star told us.

Everyone’s favorite ‘Black Mirror’ episode, ‘San Junipero,’ won big at the Emmys.

The announcement of Black Mirror’s next six episodes killed what lingering hope we had for an official “San Junipero” sequel, but the series may not be done with its most popular installment. Not only may the VR tale get a shout-out in an “Easter egg hose” coming to Season 4, but showrunners are considering “an experience” followup to the episode.

The beloved “San Junipero” outing of Black Mirror is one of the few granted a happy ending, though not for lack of some heavy subject matter. One scene in particular might have dragged down the entire episode, as creator Charlie Brooker describes cut footage that would “just be too sad.”

Everyone knows how Beauty and the Beast starts off — a haughty prince refuses to give shelter to an old lady who turns out to be a fairy, who then curses him and his whole castle, turning him into a monster and his staff into inanimate objects. Well, the inanimate objects are still pretty animate, able to talk and dance and sing at poor Belle, who should be checking her food for hallucinogens rather than singing along, but who cares, this is a Disney movie. For those of you dying to see the rest of the castle’s inhabitants in their more flesh-and-blood forms, they’re human again in a new poster standee for the movie.

Gugu Mbatha-Raw first caught the film world’s attention with her lead role in Amma Asante’s Belle, and now she’s quickly becoming one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood. You might recognize her most from her recent stint in Black Mirror‘s delightful romance episode “San Junipero,” but soon you’ll see her in Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time, Bad Robot’s God Particle (which she didn’t know what a Cloverfield movie), and hear her voice in Disney’s new Beauty and the Beast. But before those hit theaters, Mbatha-Raw co-stars in Miss Sloane as a stalwart gun control lobbyist.

Black Mirror had hits and misses in its double-size transition to Netflix for Season 3, but few stood out so much as the ‘80s-tinged, and oddly-optimistic “San Junipero.” Black Mirror isn’t the type for direct sequels, however connected its stories might be, but the episode’s director weighs in on another potential visit to “San Junipero.”

If anyone can keep a secret in Hollywood, it’s J.J. Abrams. His Bad Robot-produced Cloverfield was promoted with a sneaky viral marketing campaign in late 2007, and earlier this year the second film in the franchise remained a complete mystery until weeks before its release. Last week we learned the third Cloverfield film will reportedly be the Abrams-produced God Particle, but that film is so top secret that its lead actress had, and still has no idea about its connection to the Cloverfield universe.

In a pretty inspired move, back when the idea for a Wrinkle in Time movie was still a whisper on the wind, director Ava DuVernay decided to give her adaptation the kind of multicultural cast that is unfortunately all but unheard of in a fantasy movie. The Murry family, whom Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle book series is based on, will be a mixed-race family in the film, with a white father and a black mother. They recently cast the protagonist, Meg, and now it’s been announced that her mother will be played by Beyond the Lights and Black Mirror star Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

The brilliance of Black Mirror is how it feels relatable to our present, yet just far enough into the future. Creator Charlie Brooker described that distance best when he said the dark satire is about “the way we might be living in 10 minutes’ time if we’re clumsy.” There’s an emphasis is on the “we” in Black Mirror, a show that isn’t about the evils of technology, but the ways it can fuel the vile and detestable parts of human behavior to harrowing degrees.