Friday news Roundup 28/07: F1 Preview, Star Wars & TMNT

Jonathan Victoria • 28 Jul 2023 News

A short news roundup heading into the weekend.

Formula 1 heads to Belgium, news on an anticipated Star Wars series, and a final trailer for the new TMNT movie headline today's short news roundup.

Belgian Grand Prix preview

One more race before the summer break and the Belgian Grand Prix will be the last race for four weeks, which does feel a bit unusual as the grid would normally return from the break to Spa-Francorchamps to start the second half of the season, not end the first.

Either way, after a very straightforward Hungarian Grand Prix race last weekend, Spa seems to be up to its old tricks, throwing horrible rain conditions at the sprint race weekend.

The First and only free practice session is already in the books, and next up today (Friday) is qualifying for Sunday’s race. For the casual fans, yes this is a weird format, it's a sprint race weekend, just go with it.

Tomorrow will see the sprint race qualifying and the sprint race itself, providing some extra excitement on the Saturday.

This could be in jeopardy, though, as rain is set to fall all weekend long. And the minute rain falls on the track, everybody gets PTSD-like flashbacks to the criminally bad 2021 Belgian GP.

Hopefully it won’t be that bad and there will be some actual running, although by the looks of FP1, qualifying later on may be rather subdued (if it even happens).

If qualifying is rained off, then the start order for Sunday’s race will be determined by… (get ready for it) the championship, meaning the inevitable Max Verstappen pole position is basically secure for this weekend.

Final trailer & first reviews for TMNT

The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is out in cinemas soon, and now the final trailer and first reviews are out now.

This latest offering of the beloved franchise is taking a new twist on its stylings, being an animated film with interesting visuals that seem as though to be inspired by the latest Spider-Man animated films.

IGN has given the film an eight out of 10, which depending on how well you know IGN and their rankings is either really good or means absolutely nothing. It has been given a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that is a real indicator of a good film.

Better yet, the “I like turtles” kid that went viral on Vine back in its heyday has done once again, recreating his famous line 16 years later with the face paint on and all!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is brought to us by Seth Rogan, who also stars in the film alongside John Cena and Jackie Chan. The film is out on 31st July in the UK.

Donald Glover returning as Lando

Some good news for pretty much all Star Wars fans - the one good thing from Solo: A Star Wars Story will be returning, and that is Donald Glover will be reprising his role as Lando Calrissian.

Glover, also known as Childish Gambino in the music industry, played a young Calrissian to perfection and was one of the only redeeming things about the subpar movie.

It was already confirmed that there would be a Lando series coming to Disney+ at some point, but now the news is that the actor, along with his brother Stephen, will be writing the show. This move comes after original writer Justin Simien left the project as the writer. 

It's not actually been confirmed that Glover will be playing the role, but this seems pretty dead certain he will be.

The brothers previously worked on the critically acclaimed Atlanta series that also starred Donald, so its safe to say that whatever they come up with for Lando is sure to be brilliant.