The pop culture calendar isn’t exactly hurting for worthwhile festivals, conventions, and junkets. Including the usual suspects like San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), New York Comic Con (NYCC), South by Southwest (SXSW), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), there’s a host of acronymic events that Den of Geek and other outlets have made a habit of covering over the years. One thing many of these cons have in common, however, is that they’re not located in Hollywood. And by “Hollywood,” of course, we mean “Atlanta, Georgia.”
Blessed with a temperate climate, thriving industry, and local governments that are amenable to filming tax breaks, the Peach State’s capital city has become a major production center for film and television. Already the long-time home for Turner properties like TNT, TBS, and Adult Swim, Atlanta has increasingly made way for other heavy hitters like Marvel and Netflix in recent years. And to capitalize on that increased Hollywood presence, major festivals are starting to make their way as well.
Hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)’s Atlanta campus, SCAD TVfest has been bringing folks from the TV industry together for more than a decade. This year’s edition welcomed in everyone from Agatha All Along showrunner Jac Schaeffer to Shōgun‘s Hiroyuki Sanada to The Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame. Den of Geek was there through it all, prowling around red carpets and panels to get some insight from the creatives behind our favorite shows.
Agatha All Along
Agatha All Along star Patti LuPone has already said all that needs said about the potential of a second season. It’s not happening, folks! Thankfully, Agatha and WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer was still happy to speak with us about her two beloved Marvel shows, which can now be best described as occupying the “Ralph Bohner-verse.”
“It was my personal mission to get Ralph Bohner back on the chessboard,” Schaeffer said. “I was like ‘I’m not doing the show unless Evan Peters is in his trailer.’”
The Agatha and WandaVision scribe went on to discuss her favorite Kathryn Hahn moment, working with the Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez on “The Ballad of The Witches’ Road,” and her excitement for the upcoming Vision Quest series.
Shogun
Legendary Japanese actor and producer Hiroyuki Sanada was on site at SCAD TVfest to receive a well-earned Lifetime Achievement Award. Before that, however, he stopped by the red carpet to share some details on the unexpected but much hyped second season of FX hit Shōgun.
“We used the whole novel part already. So we have no novel in the season two, but we have real history and models,” Sanada said. “We know what happened in the history. So you keep that taste of season one but we’re going to create original entertainment, fictional entertainment, not just the history book.”
St. Denis Medical
Even at a festival devoted to honoring the best of television, there’s a certain level of confusion as to what a “TV show” even is. Check out this dispatch from the Den of Geek newsletter in which one attendee doesn’t know whether the aforementioned Shōgun is a TV series or not. There’s no confusion when it comes to NBC sitcom St. Denis Medical, however. This well-received hospital mockumentary is unmistakably a television program and a good one at that, taking home the Breakthrough Cast Award at SCAD TVfest.
“I grew up in Korea and I learned colloquial English watching Friends. NBC is obviously iconic for their comedy. It feels crazy [to be a part of this],” Serena actress Kahyun Kim said.
Stranger Things
The main event of SCAD TVfest Day One on February 5 was an evening panel and screening with Stranger Things creators and Variety Showrunner Award winners Matt and Ross Duffer. Though the audience at SCADshow theater was noticeably disappointed to discover that the screening was merely of a previously-released season 4 episode (and not unseen footage from the upcoming fifth and final season), the Duffers made the experience worth everyone’s while with keen insights about the TV industry and some season 5 teases.
Among the season 5 revelations was that VFX and editing work is ahead of schedule and the Duffers are confident that the show’s swansong will arrive in 2025 as originally planned. Additionally, they clarified that any Stranger Things spinoffs would not feature existing characters, scuttling the fans’ dreams of a Steve and Dustin buddy comedy.
The Duffers also swatted down expectations of working within a pre-existing franchise like Star Wars or Marvel. “If we have any chips we can cash in from Stranger Things it should be something original,” Matt Duffer said, before adding: “And if that’s a total dud we’ll do IP.”
Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances
As you can probably tell from its lengthy, almost Fall Out Boy song c. 2005-esque title, Oh My God…Yes! A Series of Extremely Relatable Circumstances is an Adult Swim joint. Created by indie comic figure Adele “Supreme” Williams, Oh My God…Yes! etc. etc. follows “the misadventures of three best friends as they navigate womanhood” in a near-future South Central L.A. Though the show has the usual Adult Swim aesthetic down pat, it’s also, unbelievably, the network’s first series to feature a Black woman protagonist.
“It’s an honor,” Williams told Den of Geek of her show’s unlikely place in cable history. “But I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t an immense amount of pressure. And if I can be even more vulnerable: it’s a little scary. You get a little in your head about how the audience will respond to the work.”
Still, Williams is excited to see how far that experience can go.
“There are so many characters that show up in this season that could have their own entire episode,” Williams said. “What I love about [fellow Adult Swim series] Smiling Friends is all these random and tertiary characters they bring into the world and as the story goes along they subvert your expectations. I love the show. And I see [Oh My God…Yes] as going on for a few more seasons. Fingers crossed for sure.”
Cobra Kai
After six seasons of wholesome martial arts mayhem, The Karate Kid spinoff Cobra Kai is set to ride off into the sunset with its final batch of episodes premiering February 13 on Netflix. It’s been quite the journey for the YouTube Red survivor and its creators (Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg, and Josh Heald) and some of its cast (Tanner Buchanan, Mary Mouser, and Jacob Bertrand) stopped by the SCAD TVfest red carpet to discuss it all, including whether any crucial Karate Kid characters never made it into Cobra Kai’s six seasons.
“We always tried to tell a modern story and if there was a fun, organic way to bring the original characters back, we did it that way,” Hurwitz said. “But believe me, we know every single actor that we didn’t get, and it’s either because there wasn’t the right story for them or they’re just not in acting mode anymore.”
The Recruit
2025 has been quite the year for Noah Centineo…and we’re not even through February yet. The To All The Boys trilogy star kicked off the calendar with a double-feature on Netflix, headlining The Recruit season 2 and popping up for a not-so-surprise cameo in XO, Kitty season 2. As Centineo told Den of Geek, the South Korea filming location for both projects may have been more than a coincidence.
“You’d have to ask Netflix,” Centineo joked. “I think maybe it was by design on their end or it was just a really happy coincidence. The team over at Netflix and ACE [Entertainment] realized I was going to be over there for The Recruit. They hey hit me up and I said ‘Of course, I would love to.'”
Fresh off winning SCAD’s Distinguished Performer Award, Centineo is gearing up for another season of The Recruit. “I have no idea what’s gonna happen in season three. The only thing I know is that it needs to blow season two and season one out of the water.”
SCAD Presents: Lodged
One particularly charming aspect of SCAD TVfest is the SCAD Atlanta campus itself and the involvement of many of the college’s students. Aspiring filmmakers, performers, and artisans not only work many of the panels, junkets, and events, but occasionally get to highlight their own work. One such example is the SCAD-created sitcom Lodged. Set in an Aspen ski lodge, the series finds a young entrepreneur trying to convert the space into a swanky resort. It’s a real-ass TV show. But it’s also a learning opportunity for its cast and crew.
“Sitcom is a good blend of theater and film. And for me personally, [Lodged] came at a perfect time where I had gone my whole life basically doing theater, and now in the last couple years, I’m transitioning to film and television. This bridges the gap,” Drake Aasen said.
“SCAD just offers such a variety of opportunities – from improv clubs to sitcoms to short films to plays to everything. They give us three day weekends, so we really have the time to collaborate on projects and work together.” Jocelyn Shelfo said.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
At 16 years old, Percy Jackson and the Olympians star Walker Scobell isn’t quite old enough to even be a SCAD student yet but that didn’t stop him from receiving TVfest’s Rising Star Award. Scobell spoke with Den of Geek about the Percy Jackson season 2 moment he’s most excited for people to see.
“What we did in episode four with Charybdis and Scylla,” he said. “I don’t want to spoil anything but this is probably the biggest [episode]. It’s its own movie to be honest. That was the first table read we did where we hadn’t read it beforehand. They wanted us to all experience it for the first time with them.”
The post Agatha All Along, Shogun, Cobra Kai, and More: SCAD TVfest 2025 Round Up appeared first on Den of Geek.
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