In The Christmas Challenge, during their “Modernly Independent” podcast, host Laura Ross (Jennica Schwartzman) and her best friend and producer, Paul (Zack Gold), receive the “Christmas Challenge,” from a listener: an advent calendar of daily holiday activities that promotes togetherness, which proves a bit difficult for Laura, who always displays her strength of independence. When they get a chance to be picked up by a national podcast network, network executive Michale (Galadriel Stineman) joins them for December, and like Paul, loves everything about Christmas. Will Laura be able to make room for new traditions, or will she spend her holidays alone?

To promote the film, SciFi Vision recently spoke with director star Schwartzman and Director Hunter West about making the film, their favorite Christmas traditions, and more. Read the full transcript below. The Christmas Challenge is currently available on Up Faith & Family’s streaming service, and starting today, on other platforms.

Last week Gangs of London returned to AMC+ for its second season. To promote the return of the series, SciFi Vision spoke with stars Waleed Zuaiter, who plays villain Koba, and Narges Rashidi, who plays Lale, at a recent roundtable where they spoke about their characters’ darkness, connecting with it, and more.

Read the full transcript below, and be sure to tune into Gangs of London on AMC+.

The fan-favorite series Manifest recently returned for a fourth season on Netflix. The series follows a group of people that took a flight only to return and find five years had past. The 828ers start to experience callings, or visions of future events, that some of them come to believe they need use to help others and change their future to survive.

Creator and showrunner of the series, Jeff Rake, recently spoke to SciFi Vision about his reactions to the series being picked up by Netflix and how much his initial plans changed over the course of the series. Watch the full interview below. 

With its new series, Dangerous Liaisons, Starz takes on a well-known story from a fresh new angle. 

Since its publication in 1782, the French novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been adapted dozens of times. Modern audiences are probably most familiar with 1988’s Oscar-winning Dangerous Liaisons, which starred Glenn Close and John Malkovitch as the Marquise de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont, bitter exes who use sex and secrets to manipulate and destroy their fellow aristocrats.

But the Starz production is not a retelling; rather, it’s a prequel. Throughout the first season (and presumably the second; it has already been renewed), we see happy couple Camille and Pascal (played by Alice Englert and Nicholas Denton) take the first steps toward becoming the Marquise and Vicomte. It all starts with a collection of sexy letters that fall into the wrong hands, setting the stage for blackmail.

Tomorrow, the hugely popular series, The Walking Dead, takes its final bow as the last episode airs. Earlier in the week, SciFi Vision spoke with cast members of the series and asked them to look back at their characters’ journeys and talk about what they felt was the most defining moment of the series for their character and how it changed them.

For Seth Gilliam, who plays Father Gabriel in the series, it was when he lost his vision in his right eye. “It seems to coincide with him seeing things a lot clearer and being a little more devout in his belief in himself and his decision-making process and his courage level and his conviction levels,” the actor told SciFi Vision. “I think he went partially blind and gained a bit more insight into himself.”

“It's always been Shiva for Ezekiel,” said Khary Payton about his character’s tiger, “because, to me, Shiva dying, it coincided with Ezekiel losing half of his Kingdom in the war, in all out war, and I think he has been fighting to come back from that ever since…She was always, for me, the embodiment of the Kingdom itself. So, when [he] was grieving her and mourning her, it was Ezekiel mourning his people and his worth as a leader, and as a person, for thinking that the power of positive thinking means that everything's always going to be okay, and coming to find that really, it's about persevering. It's not that everything's going to be okay; it's how you get through and still make life worth living.”

Tomorrow night marks the end of an era when the hugely popular series, The Walking Dead, airs for the final time. To promote the series finale, SciFi Vision caught up with cast members and asked them to look back at their characters’ journeys and talk about what the defining moment was that changed their characters and how.

For Josh McDermitt, this season his character Eugene was most affected by finding out the truth about Stephanie/Max. “[I]t's just finding out the truth about the decoy Stephanie (Chelle Ramos), who turned out to be Shira, and who Max (Margot Bingham) really was,” the actor explained to SciFi Vision. “I think that that brought him down to his lowest point, but then meeting Max kind of brought him up again and gave him a new outlook on life…When he came to the Commonwealth, it was definitely when he felt like all hope was lost that he saw this little tiny light off in the distance, and that light has grown to then shine the light on all the misdeeds and the bad things going on in the Commonwealth.”

For Eleanor Matsuura, who plays Yumiko, it was finding her brother Tomi (Ian Anthony Dale)’s picture on the wall. “It was the beginning of drawing everyone into the Commonwealth by virtue of making the group that I was with stay in that moment,” said the actress. “It was this glimpse into her past, this pull that was keeping her from leaving with the group, an opportunity to sort of see where she came from. How that's unfolded in this season with the courtroom stuff and representing Eugene, it felt like the past and the present were all just brought together.”

Today, AMC+’s series Gangs of London returned for an action-packed season two, which will introduce viewers to new characters and unexpected power struggles. To promote the return of the series, SciFi Vision recently spoke with executive producer Corin Hardy, as well as Sopé Dìrísù, who stars as Elliot Finch in the series, at a recent roundtable where they chatted about violence on the series, what they are looking forward to fans seeing this season, and more. Read the full transcript below, and be sure to tune in on AMC+.

Today, the second season of Leverage: Redemption drops on Amazon Freevee. Noah Wyle returns to play Harry Wilson, as well as to direct again.

SciFi Vision recently got to sit down with Wyle and talk to him not only about directing again this season but about some of the difficulties in acting in the same episode you are directing. “What you shortchange yourself of is the prep on the episode, because you have to act in the episode that's just before it,” he told the site, “So, you get a little bit more efficient about how you prep, and you get a little bit more relaxed about what prep really is and isn't. I found that as I got more opportunities to direct the season, I was coming in with my plan, but looking at it a lot less and looking for things that weren't my plan a lot more, and finding that that was even more fun and exciting to know that I had a backup if I needed it, but be looking for the open door whenever a door would close as a new sort of way of testing myself.”

According to the actor, directing on Leverage: Redemption is not too dissimilar to The Librarians, which he also starred in and directed a handful of times. “Both shows are predicated on pace,” Wyle told SciFi Vision. “You have to keep the energy and the pace up, otherwise, you really lose the stakes of what you're going for, and you lose the audience's attention. So, either the actors need to be moving or the camera needs to be moving and there needs to be a real metronomic pace that's pretty quick.”

***The following contains spoilers for 2.07***

Tonight, NBC premiered the midseason finale of La Brea. At the end of the episode, when Gavin (Eoin Macken) prepares to jump back into the sinkhole to 10,000 BC with his family in the hopes of helping his mother (Melissa Neal), Caroline, stop what’s been happening for good, he starts to have a vision. In his vision, he sees his wife (Natalie Zea), Eve, dying. When Gavin had visions before, they were of his past as Isiah, but this time seems different. Last week, SciFi Vision spoke with showrunner David Appelbaum about the fall finale and asked about the visions. “This vision of Eve dying and her death is something that's going to drive our story in a big way in the back half of the season, knowing that might be around the corner at any time,” Appelbaum told the site. “It's really going to up the stakes for all of our characters needing to protect Eve, but also, increase the stakes of wanting to get her out of there into a safer place.”

The showrunner went on to say that the show would delve into the mythology behind it, but more importantly how it affects the family emotionally now that they’ve been reunited. “Now, in 10,000 BC, in the back half of the season, how they stay together emotionally is going to be another complicating factor, and the specter of Eve's death is something that's going to be at the center of that,” said Appelbaum.

Recently, Netflix premiered the first half of the fourth and final season of its series Manifest. The series follows passengers of Flight 828 who returned from their flight to find five years had gone by. However, that was not all, as they each started having “callings,” or visions of future events. Some of the passengers also came to believe that there is a death date coming for them if they don’t use the visions to help others and change their future.

At the end of last season, Angelina (Holly Taylor), believing baby Eden Stone to be her angel and savior, killed Eden's mother and kidnapped the child. However, as misguided as she is, she seemed to truly care about Eden. “I think that Angelina is always coming from a place of genuinely thinking she's doing the right thing, and she does care about people a lot,” Taylor explained to SciFi Vision during a recent interview. “That's kind of the reason she's gotten into the messes that she has, because she cares so deeply. And then she doesn't feel like it's reciprocated, and she's so hurt that then she makes bad choices. So with Eden, she feels this amazing connection with her…[It] also was nice to show a more humane side of the character that's done these drastic things, and that you can have both. It doesn't justify the bad things that you've done, but it made it much more interesting for me to play, to show that she is human and caring and nurturing while she's doing these evil, insane things.”