Ted Lasso season 3 has officially entered production – but will its later than usual release date reduce its chances of success during next year's award season?
If that sounds like a loaded question, allow us to explain. First, the good news: filming has finally begun on the critically acclaimed Apple TV Plus show's third season, with a post on the streamer's Twitter account confirming as much.
It's expected that Ted Lasso season 3 will be the final entry in the soccer comedy series and, truth be told, we're not even remotely ready to say goodbye to Ted and company. Still, season 3's delayed production start date means that the cast, crew, and fanbase can drag out its potential farewell for as long as possible.
But there is one possible problem with Ted Lasso season 3's later than expected start date – namely, that it could miss out on a bunch of 2023 award season nominations.
That may seem like a curious opinion to hold, especially when 2022's award season hasn't ended yet. Prominent award ceremonies like the Golden Globes have already taken place, but this year's BAFTAs and Oscars are still to be held. Ted Lasso season 2 may not have been nominated in any category at either of those events, but it is up for gongs at other prestigious ceremonies including the Writers Guild of America Awards, Critics Choice Awards, and Golden Reels Awards.
With its 24 wins on the 2021 awards circuit, and the three it's secured so far this year, Ted Lasso is an awards season darling. It would be something of a shock, then, if it inexplicably missed out on being nominated for any prizes during the 2023 awards season.
Season 3's later than expected start date, though, makes that a possibility. Filming on its predecessors began in January 2020 and January 2021, meaning that Ted Lasso season 3's start date is two months later than usual. As Brendan Hunt (who plays Coach Beard on the show), explained to TVLine , this delayed start to production could result in season 3 bypassing 2022 completely and being released in 2023. That would certainly make it ineligible for next year's award season.
But what if Ted Lasso season 3 is released sometime in 2022? It would still be in danger of missing out on the 2023 awards season because of various eligibility rules.
According to the 2022 Oscars eligibility criteria , studios wanting to nominate their movies and TV shows for awards had to do so by December 31, 2021. For award ceremonies that Ted Lasso has previously triumphed at, such as the Critics Choice Awards, the cut-off point was even stricter for 2022 – studios having to put their nominations forward by November 15, 2021 .
If similar rules are implemented for 2023's awards circuit, Ted Lasso season 3's cast and crew will face an uphill battle to land any award nominations. The show needs to be filmed and edited, and will require other large-scale post-production elements including VFX shots, potential pick-ups, and more. All of that has to be completed on most episodes before a release date can be announced.
There's a chance that Ted Lasso season 3 could make it in time to be nominated for next year's biggest award ceremonies. Seasons 1 and 2 were released in August 2020 and July 2021 – seven and six months after filming began on each entry respectively. If season 3 follows a similar shooting schedule, its first episodes may be ready in time to arrive by late September or early October. That would put Ted Lasso season 3 in prime award eligibility territory.
Even so, that'll be a big ask. If Ted Lasso season 3 is the final entry in the Apple TV Plus series , its creators will want to send it off with a bang. That means giving it the send off that it deserves narratively and from character arc perspectives, as well as making it the best entry in the TV show yet. We suspect, then, that more work has gone into Ted Lasso season 3 than its previous two entries, resulting in its delayed production start date.
Is Ted Lasso season 3 in danger of potentially missing out on more gongs in 2023? Frankly, yes. It sounds like the cast and crew want to take their time on this entry, especially if it's the show's final season. That patience and meticulous execution could be the very things that prevent it from landing any awards early next year. And, with other TV shows likely to enthral viewers and critics in the meantime, Ted Lasso may have an even bigger fight on its hands during the 2024 awards season.
That, though, may be a small price to pay. If this is to be Ted Lasso's swansong, we – and many other fans, we suspect – will want it to be as good as possible, and give him the farewell that he deserves. If it has to miss a few awards ceremonies next year to deliver on that front, it may be an own goal that's worth scoring after all.
Turning Red is Pixar’s pioneering anime movie that'll make you relive your youth
Pixar is a pioneering powerhouse. From creating the first entirely CGI feature film in Toy Story to crafting family-friendly movies with rich, grown-up themes like Soul , the Disney subsidiary has been spearheading a modern golden age of animation for nearly 30 years.
As one of the world’s pre-eminent studios, Pixar continuously strives to push filmmaking boundaries – and Turning Red is no different. Pixar’s 25th feature film is another beautiful-looking flick with a captivating nostalgia-fuelled storyline, but its development wasn’t without challenges. Unlike other Pixar ventures, such as Luca , the ongoing pandemic wasn’t the biggest obstacle for Turning Red’s crew to overcome. Instead, the decision to overhaul the studio’s famed approach to animation proved more problematic.
“We’re always trying to leave our comfort zone,” producer Lindsey Collins tells TechRadar. “We’ve become very comfortable with creating films that are kind of realistic or stylized with a certain look. To be totally frank, there was some hesitancy to fully embrace a new direction – people were concerned and nervous that it wouldn’t be successful.”
Ahead of Turning Red’s March 11 release, TechRadar sat down with Collins and director Domee Shi to discuss how Pixar overcame adversity to deliver a uniquely stylized film. We also chat about the movie’s celebration of 90s culture, plus the anime and other unusual influences behind its distinctive design.
A monster calls
Set in early 2000s Toronto, Turning Red tells the tale of Meilin ‘Mei’ Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a confident but nerdy Chinese-Canadian schoolgirl with a seemingly perfect life. She’s a grade-A student who boasts a close-knit ‘ride or die’ friendship group comprising Miriam (Ava Morse), Priya (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan), and Abby (Hyein Park). Mei is also extremely close to her overbearing mom Ming (Sandra Oh), but she’s proud of their relationship and the cultural heritage they share. Simply put, life couldn’t be better.
That is, until one morning when Mei inexplicably wakes up as a giant red panda. Initially horrified by her new appearance, Mei soon realizes that her cute-but-fiery alter ego only emerges when she gets too emotional. By staying calm, Mei can keep a lid on her new form – but that’s easier said than done. Torn between her deep-seated family ties and her increasing desire for freedom (not to mention the onset of puberty), Mei is forced to navigate the highs and lows of teenage life, all the while trying to find a cure to her beastly curse.
Given that Shi emigrated to Toronto with her parents as a toddler, Turning Red’s director admits that certain plot points and elements of Mei’s character are inspired by her childhood. For instance, the scene where Ming turns up at Mei’s school – using sunglasses as her only form of disguise – to spy on her, and subsequently embarrass Mei in front of her schoolmates, is directly lifted from Shi’s own life.
It’s this intergenerational battle between Asian parents and their children, especially mother-daughter relationships, that was a key theme Shi wished to explore at length. As she jokes: “I needed a full film to tell that story”.
For a movie that explores adolescence, familial bonds, and companionship through a female lens, Turning Red needed the right individuals to lead its development. It’s fitting, then, that an allegorical film about the transition to womanhood is the first Pixar flick to feature an all-female leadership team.
Their personal input was vital to how Turning Red, well, turned out. Shi – whose animated short ‘Bao’ won an Academy Award in 2019 – was cautious about turning her feature directorial debut into a memoir-esque tale that some viewers may not find relatable. With the aid of their female co-workers, though, Shi and Collins were not only able to capture the confusing and at-times isolating aspects of puberty, but also the depth of female relationships.
“I was nervous about airing the embarrassing and dramatic moments of my life,” Shi admits. “But good stories come from a real place of vulnerability. It was also important to me not to make it semi-autobiographical, because who wants to see that? We had to put some magic in it, and make it fun, entertaining, and engaging for audiences.”
“It’s a very personal story,” Collins adds. “We always try to lean into that when we start new projects to capture its true essence. Domee’s ability to immediately bring that to the table, especially with Mei and Ming’s relationship, was a great starting point.”
Breaking with tradition
There was one phrase, though, in Shi’s initial pitch that piqued the interests of Pixar’s executive team – Turning Red needed to be an ‘Asian tween fever dream’ anime-style film.
The ‘Asian tween fever dream’ element was easy to comprehend. Mei’s Chinese heritage illustrates the film’s celebration of Asian culture. Tween – or tweenager, to give its full title – describes a child between the ages of 10 and 13. Meanwhile, fever dream relates to the movie’s neon-infused, pastel-colored fantasy aesthetic.
But Shi’s desire to make an anime flick proved troublesome for some Pixar employees. This is a studio comprising veteran artists, animators, and other crew members that have produced similarly styled movies for 25-plus years. Why deviate from a formula that’s led to multiple award wins and immeasurable acclaim from fans and critics alike?
“We wanted to create something unique,” Shi explains. “Mei is a mix of Canadian and Chinese, so we wanted to equally honor western and eastern animation styles. That’s why we drew inspiration from classic anime from the late 90s and early 2000s.”
That anime and manga influence is evident from the get-go. Mei’s exaggerated running gait is reminiscent of characters in Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece series. Her red panda transfiguration is comparable to equivalent transformations in Natsuki Takaya’s Fruits Basket and Rumiko Takahashi’s Ranma ½. Traditional anime eyes, as seen in classic anime including Sailor Moon and Pokémon , are heavily used throughout to accentuate a character’s emotions. Even Mei’s red panda form is evocative of Totoro in Studio Ghibli ’s iconic My Neighbor Totoro movie, while a scene in the movie's third art seemingly pays homage to Hajime Isayama's Attack on Titan (it's also clearly influenced by Toho's Godzilla , which has its own anime style shows).
As Shi points out, though, there’s a specific western anime series that was as influential as its eastern counterparts.
“We were also inspired by Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim vs the World ,” she reveals. “And Edgard Wright’s film adaptation of that series. I’m a huge fan of their work, especially Edgar’s editing style and quick camera cuts. His Scott Pilgrim film is so comic book and anime-inspired – I love how he styled the backgrounds and fight scenes in a 3D medium, so we took lots of inspiration from that.”
Still, as innovative as Turning Red's development is, diverging from Pixar’s traditional animation format created problems. Crew members were used to crafting 3D characters and environments, and showing a character’s pair of eyes to help audiences gauge an individual’s emotional state.
Turning Red threw Pixar’s conventional animation manual out of the window. A mix of 2D and 3D animation – combining hand-drawn anime elements with 3D lighting, character and structural designs, and general atmosphere – was decided early on. The occasional use of 2D character profiles, where viewers would only see one eye, proved to be a difficult technique for some veteran staffers to understand.
It was an animation technique called ‘isolated motion’, though, that proved most difficult to execute. Pixar animators were used to moving multiple character limbs to embellish their reactions on the screen. However, isolated motion required animators to move a single limb, such as an arm, while the rest of a character’s body remains stationary. For a few crew members, this new animation technique was difficult to master. That is, until a new piece of animation software – Profile Mover – was introduced.
“Profile Mover was a huge game-changer in how we make characters move,” Collins reveals. “The 2D elements aren’t typical for us but were driven by Domee’s desire to play in this new sandbox. We were very conscious of making this look overly simplistic or even cheap, so we spent a lot of time proving this could work in the testing phase and creating a holistically styled look for the movie. Profile Mover helped our animators to relearn what was possible from an animation perspective. I think it’s going to be used in all of our films going forward.”
Nineties nostalgia
From The Good Dinosaur to WALL-E, Pixar has run the gamut of time itself. The studio has taken audiences on journeys into the past and far future, but Turning Red’s setting roots it in the early 2000s – a period that’ll make some viewers wistfully look back on their childhoods.
Turning Red is packed with 90s culture and playground crazes. From Tamagotchis, bucket hats and sketchbooks, to fanny packs, grunge fashion and boybands, Pixar’s latest movie is a nostalgia-fueled love letter to a bygone era. As a 90s child, Shi’s desire to set the film around this era may seem obvious, but there was another major reason behind its post-millennium setting.
“We wanted to tell an adolescent story without having to deal with social media,” Shi says. “If you told it in the modern age, you can't ignore that, and I wanted a blank canvas to tell this coming-of-age tale. The aesthetic of the late 90s and early 2000s was really fun and colorful, so it just felt like a really cool time period to try to depict and stylize.”
Viewers of a certain age will enjoy rewatching Turning Red to discover its cultural references alongside the traditional hunt for Pixar Easter eggs, Pizza Planet truck included.
And rewatch it, you can. Turning Red was due to be released in theaters worldwide, but the rapid rise of Covid-19’s Omicron variant in late 2021 led to a revised release strategy. On January 8, Disney announced that Turning Red would debut exclusively on Disney Plus ; a decision taken with film fans’ safety in mind. As much as Shi, Collins and Turning Red’s crew understood the sentiment behind the move, Pixar staffers couldn’t help but lament the last-minute switch. As Collins succinctly told us: “ It kind of sucks ”.
Disappointing as that decision is for Pixar employees and fans alike, it still beats the alternative – that is, not being able to see the film at all. Turning Red is a movie that represents a series of firsts for the studio, and one that’s sure to appeal to many. It’s a joyous and ultimately heart-warming watch that’ll make adults yearn to relive their youth, while its irresistibly charming anime aesthetic is truly groundbreaking, even for a company as established as Pixar.
In time, film aficionados may claim that there are better Pixar movies than Turning Red, but it’s hard to deny how revolutionary it is for the Disney-owned studio. It’s a nostalgia-inducing, thematically resonant flick that celebrates the best of western and eastern animation. Quite frankly, it’s a film that deserves to be seen.
Turning Red is available to stream now on Disney Plus.
We get a first look at the Fisker Ocean, the EV with solar panels and a rotating display
At MWC 2022 we got the chance to check out a prototype version of the Fisker Ocean battery electric SUV during its European debut.
This EV, which we first saw when it was unveiled at CES in 2020, is the latest venture of legendary car designer Henrik Fisker.
While Fisker Inc. is based in Los Angeles, California, the Ocean will be manufactured by Magna in Graz, Austria, with the first deliveries planned for later this year.
It packs worthy specs for the price
The Fisker Ocean will be available in three trims. First there's the Ocean Sport ($37,499 / £34,990), with an estimated range of 250mi (EPA) / 440km (WLTP), a 0-60mph time of 6.9s, and a 275HP (205kW) single motor (FWD) drivetrain.
Second, the Ocean Ultra ($49,999 / £48,900) offers an estimated range of 340mi (EPA) / 610km (WLTP) and a 0-60mph time of 3.9s using a 540HP (400kW) dual motor (AWD) drivetrain.
Finally, there's the Ocean Extreme and launch edition Ocean One ($68,999 / £59,900). Both deliver an estimated range of 350mi (EPA) / 630km (WLTP), and a 0-60mph time of 3.6s thanks to a 550HP (410kW) dual motor (AWD) drivetrain.
The Ocean will use lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries on the Sport trim and nickel manganese cobalt (NMC) batteries on the other trims – both supplied by CATL. Exact capacities are unknown.
As you'd expect from a modern EV, the Ocean will support 250kW or faster DC fast charging, but it will also include vehicle-to-load (V2L) functionality similar to what's offered by both the Ford F150 Lightning (power a home in an emergency) and the Hyundai Ioniq 5 (power appliances and charge other EVs).
With the specs out of the way, let's take a look at the Ocean's design, features, and tech – and share our first impressions.
It charges using the sun
The Ocean's exterior is pretty sleek for an SUV, and the design is modern and well suited to an EV. It's a big vehicle, and the large 22-inch wheels give it concept car-like proportions that stand out.
We see some Land Rover Evoque / Velar influence in the overall shape – especially in the thin headlight and LED tail lamps. The lighted Ocean branding in the front and back is a nice touch, and so is the shape of the turn-signal repeaters in the side mirrors.
We also like the kink in the rear door and the additional LED lights in the D pillars. Another standout feature is the California Mode, available in the Ultra and Extreme / One trims, which lowers all the Ocean's windows at the push of a button – including Doggie Power Windows in the D pillars and in the tailgate, plus a power glass roof -- for an open, almost Jeep- or Bronco-like experience, without the fuss of having to remove body panels.
Speaking of the power glass roof, it incorporates solar panels on the Extreme / One trims, which are said to provide 1,500-2,000 miles (2,400-3,200 km) of additional range per year, depending on climate.
Inside, the Ocean is just as sleek and modern as it is outside, and Fisker makes extensive use of recycled materials, including recycled plastic bottles. Overall, the interior design reminds us of the Ford Mustang Mach-E and the Polestar 2 .
It features a rotating center display
Despite the Ocean being on static display at Fisker's booth, we were allowed to sit in it for a few minutes. Sadly, none of the screens and controls were operational, but the driver's seat is comfortable and – like in other EV-only platforms – the interior is extremely spacious.
What really stands out inside the Ocean is the massive 17.1-inch 21:9 aspect ratio touchscreen which can pivot from portrait mode when driving to landscape mode when relaxing.
Once in the driver's seat, you're greeted by a two-spoke steering wheel with Model 3 -like scroll wheels and stalks (indicators and wipers on the left, gear selector on the right).
But unlike Tesla's offering, the Ocean features a few traditional buttons and switches for the headlights, parking brake, side mirror adjustments, and basic climate functionality – although the latter controls (below the center screen) appeared to be a 3D-printed mockup.
Like the Mustang Mach-E, the Ocean features a long and narrow rectangular instrument display affixed to the dashboard. There's also a driver monitoring camera in a pod at the bottom of the left A pillar (and presumably the right A pillar in future RHD cars).
While we didn't notice any (obvious) USB ports for charging anywhere, there appears to be two generously-sized Qi-compatible wireless charging pads in the center console.
Other fun details include a vertical blue stripe in the middle of each seat and the word "power" embossed on the side of the door sills (on the edge of the battery pack).
In all, the Ocean's interior seems like a lovely place to be, and certainly feels more premium than some of its competitors, especially for just $37,499. With 25 cut (707L) – 45 cut (1274L) with the seats down – cargo space is also plentiful behind the 40/60 folding rear seats.
Unfortunately, the Ocean doesn't have a frunk (front trunk). Like the Mercedes EQS , the hood (bonnet) is sealed, and can only be opened with tools. Fisker says this is on purpose, and mostly to save cost.
The reasoning here is that there's plenty of space in the trunk (boot), and while there is room for a few extra cubic feet of storage in front, a sealed hood avoids the need for hinges, a latch, gas struts, a light, a tub, and trim pieces. Fair.
It mixes high tech with comfort
When it comes to tech, the Ocean checks all the boxes – at least on paper. This includes a comprehensive set of advanced driver assistance (ADAS) and safety features called Fisker Intelligent Pilot, self parking, a 360-degree view, LTE connectivity, over-the-air (OTA) updates, phone-as-a-key, and more.
Obviously, we didn't get a chance to experience any of this, so you'll have to wait until we actually test this EV to get a more in-depth report.
The Ocean also packs a ton of creature comforts like dual-zone climate, heated front and rear seats, a heated steering wheel, and an immersive audio system called Fisker Hypersound.
Limo Mode – standard on the Extreme / One trims – includes an additional rear touchscreen for climate control plus power reclining rear seats. There are three drive modes (Earth, Fun, Hyper) on the Extreme / One and Ultra trims, and two (Earth, Fun) on the Sport trim.
Overall, the Ocean is shaping up to be an interesting and well rounded EV, with impressive specs and features.
The $37,499 starting price (before incentives) delivers solid value, and Fisker even plans to offer a maintenance-included lease starting at $379 per month (with $2,999 down).
While the SUV we saw in Barcelona wasn't quite production ready, Magna is a manufacturing powerhouse, so it's likely Fisker will meet its production goals.
We look forward to seeing how things develop with the Ocean in the next few months, so stay tuned for our first drive and review.