Month: September 2021

Mad Max: Furiosa – Anya Taylor-Joy Got the Lead Role Based on Edgar Wright’s Next Movie

Anya Taylor-Joy’s role in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho played a big part in her being cast as Furiosa in George Miller’s upcoming Mad Max: Fury Road prequel.

In an interview with Empire for a special “Celebration of Edgar Wright” issue, George Miller revealed fellow filmmaker Edgar Wright screened him an early cut of Last Night in Soho, starring Anya Taylor-Joy as Sandy, a dazzling wannabe singer. Impressed by her acting talents, Miller quickly realized she could play a younger version of Charlize Theron’s Furiosa.

“I’d known about Anya but I’d never seen her in a film until I saw her in Soho,” Miller recalled. “And I remember thinking, ‘Gee, she’s interesting.’ I started to say to [Wright], ‘I’m looking for someone to cast as Furiosa,’ and I barely got the sentence out before [Wright] said, ‘Don’t go any further, she’s great, she’s gonna be huge. She’s fantastic to work with.'”

Wright had been so emphatic in his response to the casting suggestion that Miller moved things forward and lined up a virtual audition, where he tasked Taylor-Joy with performing the iconic “I’m Mad As Hell” speech from Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film Network. Miller was impressed with what she delivered and sent it on to Warner Bros. for further approval.

“Anya did one version, which was really good,” he said. “I gave her just a couple of simple notes about intention and she just absolutely nailed [it]. I think it was done on an iPhone. I sent it to the studio. I explained why I thought she was right for the role. I said I was really happy to talk about it but it was so persuasive that we didn’t need to talk.”

Furiosa will hit theaters on June 23, 2023. The film is written, directed, and produced by Miller, and stars Taylor-Joy in the title role alongside Chris Hemsworth and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Miller wrote the script with his longtime partner, Oscar-nominated producer Doug Mitchell. Together, they’ve crafted a film that will be structured very differently than Fury Road.

IGN’s review of Mad Max: Fury Road noted the importance of the film’s “over-the-top stunts and eccentric characters and designs” as well as “troubled figures like Max himself and Furiosa,” but said, “it’s the overriding sense of the film’s uniqueness, its striving to be something more than just another action movie, that is most impressive.”

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Nintendo Announces Big Brain Academy: Brain Vs. Brain, Launching December 3

If you ask Nintendo what it’s going to do today, the response might be “the same thing we do every day, try to take over the world” with a new Big Brain Academy at the center of its plans. Snarf.

The company announced Big Brain Academy: Brain Vs. Brain today, due for release December 3. The game will bring the brain teaser-themed gameplay of the Big Brain Academy franchise to the Switch, this time also adding multiplayer support so friends and family can play against each other.

The new Party Mode will allow up to four players to earn points by quickly completing activities separated into five categories: Identify, Memorize, Analyze, Compute, and Visualize. Each player can set their own difficulty level, ranging from easiest–called Sprout Class–to the highly challenging Super Elite class.

The game will also include a Solo mode, a Practice mode where players can retry challenges to earn high scores and medals, and a Test mode–a quick series of five activities that serves as a mini aptitude test, assigning a Big Brain Brawn score at the end.

Big Brain Academy first debuted on the Nintendo DS in June 2005 as part of the Touch Generations line of first-party Nintendo games, which also included the Brain Age and Personal Trainer series. A sequel, Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree, was released in June 2007, after which the franchise had been dormant until now.

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New PlayStation Store Sale Discounts Plenty Of Essential PS4 And PS5 Games

If you’re looking for something to play this weekend on PS4 or PS5, the PlayStation Store has kicked off a new iteration of its Essential Picks sale. This particular sale is usually one of PSN’s best outside of major seasonal events, and this latest incarnation of Essential Picks doesn’t disappoint. You can save on a wide of variety of excellent games, including Hitman 3 ($36), Red Dead Redemption 2 ($24.59), and It Takes Two ($30).

You can save big on some other games with free PS5 upgrades such as Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate ($24) and Control Ultimate Edition ($20). One of the best deals in the sale comes on the Crash Bandicoot’s Crashiversary Bundle, which is down to only $60. It comes with Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Crash N. Sane Trilogy, and Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled.

We’ve rounded up the best deals in PSN’s Essential Picks sale below. You have until September 16 to make your picks. PSN is also running a new Games Under $15 sale featuring Ratchet & Clank, Resident Evil 7, Gran Turismo Sport, and hundreds more budget games.

Best deals on PlayStation Store

  • Assassin’s Creed Odyssey – Ultimate edition — $30 ($120)
  • Control Ultimate Edition — $20 ($40)
  • Crash Bandicoot – Crashiversary Bundle — $60 ($120)
  • Days Gone — $24 ($40)
  • God of War – Digital Deluxe edition — $18 ($30)
  • Grand Theft Auto V — $15 ($30)
  • Hitman 3 — $36 ($60)
  • It Takes Two — $30 ($40)
  • The Last of Us Part II – Digital Deluxe edition — $37.49 ($50)
  • Mafia: Trilogy — $33 ($60)
  • Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate — $24 ($60)
  • Need for Speed Heat — $15 ($60)
  • No Man’s Sky — $30 ($60)
  • Red Dead Redemption 2 — $24.59 ($60)
  • Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 — $24 ($40)

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Star Wars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge – Last Call Arrives Later This Month

Star Wars: Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge, a virtual reality experience set on the Star Wars planet of Batuu, will get an extended chapter called “Last Call” on September 15.

Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge is developed by ILMxLAB, LucasFilm’s VR studio, and today the team announced Last Call’s release date. The new chapter adds new characters, two new Tales, and several new items to buy and try at Mubo’s Workshop.

Some new faces (who you might recognize) coming to Batuu in Last Call includes Hondo Ohnaka, Neeva, Lt. Gauge, Boggs Triff, and IG-88, everyone’s favorite robot assassin who will be voiced by Rhys Darby.

There will also be returning characters like Ady Sun’Zee, R2-DS and C-3PO, Dok-Ondar, Seezelslak, Lens Kamo, and Baron Attsmun.

In Tales From the Galaxy’s Edge – Last Call, you’ll be able to explore Batuu in virtual reality. Help Dok-Ondar recover an ancient artifact from the Sardeevem Chasm and the Cavern of the Moons, or escape the First Order on the Black Spire Outpost.

There are also new Tales to experience. In The Bounty of Boggs Triff players will become IG-88 as they hunt down the mobster Bogs. Or you can continue the story of Ady’Sun Zee in The Sacred Garden set during The High Republic.

ILMxLAB has been creating several VR experiences set in the Star Wars universe including Vader Immortal. However, while the VR was certainly immersive, the story had much to be desired.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Moonfall: Exclusive Teaser Trailer for Roland Emmerich’s Sci-Fi Disaster Epic

IGN has your exclusive first look at the teaser trailer for Moonfall, the next sci-fi disaster epic from Independence Day and 2012 filmmaker Roland Emmerich. You can watch the Moonfall trailer in the player above or via the embed below.

In addition to directing Moonfall, Emmerich is also one of the writers along with Harald Kloser & Spenser Cohen, as well as a producer with Kloser.

Moonfall sees “a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it,” according to the official plot synopsis:

“With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) is convinced she has the key to saving us all – but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (Game of Thrones’ John Bradley) believe her.

These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is.”

The trailer depicts all this apocalyptic lunar-cy unfolding over audio excerpts from President John F. Kennedy’s historic 1962 speech at Rice Stadium where he said: “But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? … We choose to go to the moon … and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

The teaser’s tagline darkly riffs on Kennedy’s cosmic optimism with a far less cheery promise of its own: “In the year 2022, the moon will come to us.”

What did you think of the teaser trailer for Moonfall? Let us know that — as well your thoughts on any and all of Roland Emmerich’s movies — in the comments.

Moonfall opens on February 4, 2022, in the US and UK and in Australia on February 3, 2022.

PlayStation Finally Announces a Major Summer Showcase

Sony has announced PlayStation Showcase 2021, which will be broadcast on September 9 at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern / 9pm UK (that’s September 10 at 6am AEST).

The event promises to offer a “sneak peek at the future of PS5, with updates from PlayStation Studios and industry-leading devs,” and will last around 40 minutes. It will show off games releasing this holiday “and beyond”.

One thing you can count on not being part of the show is the (still officially untitled) PlayStation VR 2. The new headset, and its next-gen controllers, is reportedly due late next year, and a PS Blog post about the event makes clear it won’t make an appearance in the showcase.

It’s been a long wait for Sony to put out a summer event. PlayStation wasn’t a part of E3 2021 and had only a limited presence at Gamescom this year. The company put out a State of Play broadcast in July, but didn’t include any of its major studios’ projects – presumably holding them back for this event.

It’s not been a quiet summer for Sony, though. PlayStation has bought Returnal developer Housemarque and PC port specialist Nixxes, and sold a lot of PS5s. It’s also seen criticism for its handling of smaller games, and made a major U-turn on shutting down the PS3 and PS Vita stores.

Sony’s made no mention of specific games being shown at the event, but the “holiday and beyond” timing for games at the event means we could very well see Horizon: Forbidden West (recently delayed to February 2022) and God of War Ragnarok (also delayed to 2022). More speculatively, we could get word on The Last of Us Part 2’s standalone multiplayer, or perhaps even the reported remake of the original Last of Us.

Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

My Day Is Going Well, Thanks For Asking, Steam Achievement

While Cookie Clicker might not be the most technically advanced game ever, an excessively long achievement name hidden in the game suggests the developers had a lot of fun porting it to Steam. The absurd achievement was picked up by Wario64 on Twitter, who noted that the remaster of the iconic clicker game was released today to Steam.

“There’s really no hard limit to how long these achievement names can be and to be quite honest I’m rather curious to see how far we can go,” the achievement begins. “Adolphus W. Green (1844 – 1917) started as the Principal of the Groton School in 1864. By 1865, he became second assistant librarian at the New York Mercantile Library; from 1867 to 1869, he was promoted to full librarian. From 1869 to 1873, he worked for Evarts, Southmayd & Choate, a law firm co-founded by William M. Evarts, Charles Ferdinand Southmayd and Joseph Hodges Choate. He was admitted to the New York State Bar Association in 1873. Anyway, how’s your day been?”

The paragraph in the middle is paraphrased from the Wikipedia page for Adolphus W. Green, who went on from his legal beginnings to found the National Biscuit Company, AKA Nabisco.

While the wordy and educational text may have set a record for the longest Steam achievement name, the achievement itself outdates the Steam port. It’s been part of the game’s baked-in achievement system since they were introduced in version 1.026.

The achievement is gained by reaching the milestone of 10 sextillion cookies baked per second, not that you’d be able to tell that from the name. Interestingly, the next achievement in this progression, gained for baking 1 septillion cookies in one second, is simply called “Fast.”

Despite its ostensibly simple mechanics, Cookie Clicker boasts eight years of being “very actively developed,” and is now available on Steam for $4.99.

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A New Pokemon Comes To Pokemon Go Next Week

As part of Pokemon Go‘s current Season of Mischief a new Pokemon, Inkay, and its Evolution, Malamar, will be debuting in game. The psychic-type Pokemon was first introduced in Pokemon X and Y, and Niantic has said that its unique method of evolution will be carried over from the mainline games.

Inkay will be arriving as part of the Psychic Spectacular event that will include a number of other psychic-type Pokemon, running from September 8 to September 13–just a small segment of the three-month-long Season of Mischief. Inkay will be available as a rare wild encounter, but can also be caught from one-star raids, or by completing Field Research tasks. Inkay can be evolved into Malamar “only under unique circumstances,” the Niantic update says, adding that “trainers who have journeyed through the Kalos region in Pokémon X and Pokémon Y may have an inkling as to what those circumstances might be.”

Now Playing: Pokemon Go 5 Year Anniversary Trailer

The event will also give players more chances to catch other psychic Pokemon in encounters, raids, and through Research Tasks. These include the likes of Abra, Drowzee, Gothita, Solosis, and Elgyem in regular encounters, and Staryu, Chimecho, Bronzor, Espurr, Alolan Raichu, Wobbuffet, Medicham, and Metagross in raids.

Players will also be able to complete the next part of the Season of Mischief Special Research task, which will unlock more about the season’s mysterious Mythical Pokemon Hoopa.

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M. Night Shyamalan Is Already Deep Into His Next Script

M. Night Shyamalan’s latest thriller Old hit cinemas just a couple of months ago, but the writer-director-producer has already moved on to his next project. While Shyamalan hasn’t revealed what the movie is about, its title, or even what genre he’s writing in, we can still speculate wildly about what big twist we’re in for this time.

The tweet shows a picture of the new script (closed tight, of course), with the caption: “The next one. On third draft. Super tight. Under a 100 pages.” With common industry wisdom saying that one page of script is equal to roughly one minute of footage, all we can really speculate about Shyamalan’s latest project is its length–but even that could surprise us.

Other than his iconic twist endings, Shyamalan is known for his somewhat uneven body of work, ranging from beloved works like The Sixth Sense and Split, to total disasters like The Last Airbender and Lady In The Water. His latest film Old divided critics, with the film earning a middling aggregated score of 55 on GameSpot sister site Metacritic.

As for the next one, we can only hope it’ll be up there with his best.

Watch Will Smith Personally Congratulate The New Fresh Prince Will Actor

Actor Jabari Banks has been cast as the lead role in Bel-Air, Peacock’s dramatic reimagining of classic Will Smith sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Banks is a West Philadelphian who’s fresh to the world of acting, having graduated college with a BA in musical theatre just before the pandemic hit.

A video posted by Peacock shows Banks being surprised on a video call by Will Smith, who informs him that he’s been cast as the lead, Will, in Bel-Air. Banks promised he was “so ready” for the role, even showing off a picture of himself and a group of friends dressed up as the cast of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

The original role is a personal one for Smith–not only was it the role that kickstarted his acting career, the character was also loosely based on him, even bearing the same name. With that in mind, it’s great to see that Smith was able to pass the baton onto the next generation’s Will personally, if not in person.

“This is a dream come true. You don’t know,” Banks said during the call. “You probably do know. You feel it. Like, the way the show has impacted me and my life. It’s going to be an incredible experience.”

The reboot, simply titled “Bel-Air,” is looking to be quite different from the original sitcom. The reimagining is based on a viral YouTube video that put a more serious, dramatic spin on the original show’s concept.