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Doom: Annihilation will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 1
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has announced they’ll release Doom: Annihilation on Blu-ray and DVD on October 1… just in time for the spooky season.
Doom: Annihilation is a Direct-To-Video reboot for the film franchise, and it won’t have any connection to 2005’s Doom (which, believe it or not, starred The Rock before he became one of the biggest movie stars in the world). Nor is it based on id Software’s excellent Doom 2016 or it’s upcoming sequel, Doom Eternal. However, it is rated R (for “bloody violence and language throughout”), and it has portals to Hell, a bunch of nasty demons, and a platoon of space marines to serve as gory cannon fodder:
Based on the popular original video game, Doom: Annihilation is an explosive, terrifying thrill ride. On the darkest moon of Mars, scientists have found an ancient portal which allows teleportation throughout the universe. Considered to be mankind’s greatest discovery, it’s actually a gateway from Hell, unleashing a swarm of demons looking to steal the souls of everyone who gets in their way. It’s up to Lieutenant Joan Dark and an elite unit of Marines to destroy an ever-growing horde of bloodsucking and soul-stealing beasts and prevent them from taking over planet Earth.
Doom: Annihilation probably won’t be a cinematic masterpiece, but there’s surely worse ways to fill time on a dreary October day.
Netflix teams up with Studio MDHR to produce The Cuphead Show!
Chad and Jared Moldenhauer poured their hearts and souls into the development of Studio MDHR’s debut title, Cuphead. In the works for more than seven years, the brothers parlayed their love of 1930s animation and the gameplay stylings of Contra III: The Alien Wars to create a platform shooter for the ages.
Now, Netflix has signed on to adapt the game into a new animated series known as The Cuphead Show! The series will follow the adventures of Cuphead and Mugman throughout Inkwell Isles and, naturally, it’ll employ “an animation style inspired by the classic Fleischer cartoons from the 1930s”:
The game that has won the hearts and minds of fans with its gorgeous retro hand-animated style, crazy boss-brawls, and challenging gameplay will come to life on television for the first time ever in The Cuphead Show! The new series will expand on the characters and world of Cuphead, with an animation style inspired by the classic Fleischer cartoons from the 1930s.
The character-driven comedy follows the unique misadventures of the impulsive Cuphead and his cautious but easily swayed brother Mugman. Through their many misadventures across their surreal home of the Inkwell Isles, they’ve always got one another’s backs.
We don’t know when the first episodes from The Cuphead Show! will be available to stream through Netflix, but hopefully it’s pretty soon.
USA Network has ordered a Masters of Doom adaptation produced by James Franco
David Kushner originally published Masters of Doom back in 2003, and the book-length exploration of id Software’s early days became an instant hit with readers everywhere (it even spawned a quasi-sequel in 2012 with Jacked: The Outlaw Story of Grand Theft Auto). And now, more than 15 years later, Variety is reporting that the USA Network is looking to adapt the story as part of a new anthology series focused on video game history:
Masters of Doom is the amazing true story of the Lennon and McCartney of video games: John Carmack and John Romero. Together, they ruled big business. They transformed popular culture. And they provoked a national controversy. More than anything, they lived a unique and rollicking American Dream, escaping the broken homes of their youth to co-create the most notoriously successful game franchises in history—Doom and Quake—until the games they made tore them apart.
As of right now, no one has agreed to play Romero or Carmack, but we do know that James Franco will executive produce the series with his brother Dave. Both siblings worked on The Disaster Artist with writer Tom Bissell, and the three will be teaming up again for Masters of Doom. Bissell, who also wrote the book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, will serve as a writer and executive producer on the show.
USA Network wants to create a pilot for Masters of Doom before agreeing to air the series, but hopefully the story of gaming’s two most famous Johns will come to television sometime soon.
Posted in Etcetera, News, PC
Tagged Doom (1993)
Sony Pictures is producing a live-action television series based on Final Fantasy XIV
Sony Pictures has announced they are currently hard at work on a live-action Final Fantasy television series. There’s no word yet on when the show will debut, or what platform it’ll appear on, but I have to imagine it’ll take some time for the producers to procure a substantial enough wig budget.
That’s more or less a joke, but it’s also a bit staggering to even think about what Sony Pictures is attempting here. As a franchise that stretches back more than three decades (and across dozens of games), there is a lot of Final Fantasy lore to mine for a live-action adaptation. According to the announcement, the show will be partly based on Final Fantasy XIV, telling “an original story set in the fantastic world of Eorzea” and featuring a starring role for Cid.
Like most entries in the franchise, the Final Fantasy television series will “explore the struggle between magic and technology in a quest to bring peace to a land in conflict.” Viewers will also be introduced to magitek, beastmen, airships, and chocobos in future episodes.
Sony Pictures has partnered with Square Enix to develop the Final Fantasy television series, so we know the creators of the franchise will have some say in how its live-action debut plays out. Hivemind’s Jason Brown, Sean Daniel, and Dinesh Shamdasani (the same team behind the Netflix-bound adaptation of The Witcher) will executive produce the show, while Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton have been hired as writers.
Posted in Etcetera, News, PC, PS4
Tagged Final Fantasy XIV
Overwatch: The Official Cookbook will be released in October
Have you ever wondered what a gorilla with a genius-level intellect eats? We might finally get an answer in Overwatch: The Official Cookbook.
Written by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel (the same author behind World of Warcraft: The Official Cookbook and Hearthstone: Innkeeper’s Tavern Cookbook), and published by Simon and Schuster’s Insight Editions imprint, the cookbook will honor Overwatch’s international background with “authentic recipes inspired by the game’s diverse heroes”:
Based on Blizzard Entertainment’s global phenomenon Overwatch, this official cookbook is packed with scores of authentic recipes inspired by the game’s diverse heroes hailing from all corners of the universe.
Building from the game’s compelling narrative and variety of characters, this cookbook features international food and drink recipes from each hero’s homeland. Each recipe includes straightforward step-by-step instructions, mouthwatering full-color photos, pairing suggestions, and more.
Overwatch: The Official Cookbook will include more than 100 recipes and it’ll be available to purchase this October.
Uncharted film adaptation will open in theaters on December 18, 2020
The pieces are finally coming together for Uncharted’s big screen debut. Tom Holland has officially signed on to play a younger version of Nathan Drake in the film adaptation and, according to The Hollywood Reporter, it even has a release date… December 18, 2020.
It’s been a long, long road for the Uncharted movie to even make it to this point. A fan campaign tried to secure the role of Drake for Nathan Fillion all the way back in 2010, but it was Mark Wahlberg that eventually got the part (with Robert De Niro aboard as Victor “Sully” Sullivan). Both would later drop out, and Holland was put in place in 2017 (though Fillion would get to portray the character in a fan film released last year).
There’s still a lot we don’t know about Uncharted‘s cinematic aspirations, but we do know that Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane) will direct the film for Sony Pictures, and the current draft of the script was written by Jonathan Rosenberg and Mark Walker.
Posted in Etcetera, News, PS3, PS4
Tagged Uncharted: Drake's Fortune
Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie pushed back to 2020 so filmmakers can “make Sonic just right”
The first trailer for Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie gave fans all the 1990s nostalgia they could stomach. There was “Gangsta’s Paradise” on the soundtrack and Jim Carrey doing his Jim Carrey thing as Dr. Robotnik, but the CGI rendering of Sega’s Blue Blur was just as bad (and downright nightmare-inducing) as we all expected it to be.
Somehow not anticipating this reaction, the producers vowed to change Sonic’s look before the film opened in November.
Unfortunately, we’re just a few days away from Memorial Day right now and there is definitely not enough time left for the film’s animators to transform the character into something that’s acceptable to fans. So director Jeff Fowler took to Twitter today to confirm that Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie will now be released on February 14, 2020:
Taking a little more time to make Sonic just right.#novfxartistswereharmedinthemakingofthismovie pic.twitter.com/gxhu9lhU76
— Jeff Fowler (@fowltown) May 24, 2019
Presumably, we’ll get a look at the new Sonic sometime in the next few months.
Posted in Etcetera, News, Retro
Tagged Sonic the Hedgehog
Rumor: Disney is FINALLY making a movie based on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
If you’re looking for one story that best captures what made the old “Star Wars Expanded Universe” special, it’s hard to go wrong with Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
The Xbox game (which was later also released for the PC) was developed by BioWare and it took the Star Wars in sometimes startling new directions… and one those jumps was directly into the past. Knights of the Old Republic took place nearly 4,000 years before the original Star Wars, though players could still expect to find massive starships, snarky droids, Jedi Knights, and Sith Lords. Just after the release of Attack of the Clones, many fans latched onto Knights of the Old Republic as a Star Wars prequel done right.
Now, it looks like beloved characters as Revan, HK-47, Ordo, and others will finally be making their way to the big screen.
Buzzfeed is reporting that “three sources close to the project” at Lucasfilm have confirmed that a movie based on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is currently in the works. The film is currently being written by Laeta Kalogridis (who also has credits on (Avatar, Shutter Island, and Alita: Battle Angel), and if it’s successful, it could spawn an entire KOTOR trilogy.
Disney, the current owner of the Star Wars franchise, refused to comment, but they’ve definitely got a desire to create more Star Wars stories. Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a new game from Respawn, will launch this Fall. Around the same time, Jon Favreau’s The Mandolorian television series will debut on the Disney+ streaming service. And after that, Rey, Poe, Finn, and Kylo Ren will put an end to the Skywalker saga in this December’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Further down the line, the first movie in a new trilogy from Games of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will premiere in 2022. Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, is also working on his own trilogy, but it doesn’t yet have a release date.
Where a Knights of the Old Republic film would even fit into this schedule remains to be seen.