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The John Wick film series is famous for, among other things, a tremendous body count–John alone kills 77 people in the first movie, getting revenge for the death of his dog and then some. But this wasn’t always the case–the movie almost featured much fewer deaths.

Talking to GameSpot sister site Comicbook.com, John Wick trilogy director Chad Stahelski has revealed that the first draft of the script contained only three deaths, although that likely doesn’t include Wick’s puppy. Stahelski says that star Keanu Reeves sent him the script on a Friday, and he took the weekend to read and think about it. “It was much more contained,” he recalls. “I think only three people died in the original script, two were in a car crash. It was very, very minimal, and it was slightly different.”

However, Stahelski had a different idea, and wanted to make a movie that resembled a piece of Greek mythology: “a surreal action movie so it wasn’t so grounded and gray, just something different.”

The movie changed a great deal once he came on board, and the sequels feature even more kills. However, Stahelski says that they don’t set targets for these things. “The way I choreograph with my guys and stuff, we just choreograph motion and set pieces and we try to get this balletic kind of dance, live performance feel to everything,” he says. Because Keanu Reeves has “gotten so much better with the choreography,” it’s been necessary to bring in more stunt people for him to kill to show off his moves.

John Wick Chapter 4 will release in May 2022 following a COVID-19 delay. It also won’t be the final film in the series.

Christopher Nolan’s new movie Tenet is coming to theatres in the US on September 3, and the mind-bending action film is getting some promotional help from none other than Tom Cruise. In a piece of viral marketing, Cruise and his Mission Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie head to a cinema to take in the film on the big screen.

Cruise and McQuarrie remark that it’s good to see movies again in a theatre, following shutdowns due to COVID-19. Indeed, the movie business will be watching intently to see how Tenet performs in theatres, and it could impact how the rest of the industry reacts. Cruise and McQuarrie are wearing masks, and they appear to have gone relatively unnoticed in what appeared to be a public screening of the film.

Tenet stars John David Washington as a man recruited by a shadowy organization known as Tenet and challenged with taking down the evil villain, Andrei Sator, who is played by Kenneth Branagh. Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki also star in the film.

Tenet was delayed multiple times before Warner Bros. selected September 3 as its new release date for the US, following a premiere in Australia on August 26. Unlike other Warner Bros. films, like Scoob!, the movie studio held its ground and is moving forward with a theatrical release instead of putting the video up for sale or rent on home video stores.

For lots more on Tenet, check out GameSpot’s Tenet review. You can also watch our interview above with Pattinson and Debicki, who tell us about their favorite video games.

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Oculus, one of the companies that has helped pioneer virtual reality over the last handful of years, is being consolidated underneath a new name. As part of a rebranding effort to combine multiple departments, Facebook has decided to group it with other AR/VR ventures under the name Facebook Reality Labs.

The news comes on the heels of the renaming of Oculus’ annual event, Oculus Connect, which will now take place on September 16 under the its new title, Facebook Connect. This event is rumored to feature the reveal for the next Oculus Quest iteration, and it’s unclear now if new products in Facebook’s VR line will continue to bear the Oculus branding.

In a post on Tech@Facebook, the move was described as a means to make clearer which VR projects were owned by Facebook. The social media company purchased Oculus in 2014 and has allowed it to operate under that name since.

“Much like Facebook’s recent corporate rebranding, our emphasis is on clarity — visually identifying us as a part of Facebook while looking toward the future of the next computing platform that puts people at the center,” the post reads.

Facebook Reality Labs as a brand has been around for some time already, as Facebook continued to push in multiple directions with various VR and AR ventures. Just last week Facebook announced that it would require new Oculus owners to sign into their devices with Facebook accounts, while existing Oculus account holders will have to migrate by 2023.

The Oculus Quest remains one of the best VR headsets you can buy today, with great support for Half-Life: Alyx if you can tether it to a PC. It’s also the last headset that Oculus released, launching over a year ago in May 2019.

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The Kate McKinnon-led series about Carole Baskin and the “Tiger King” Joe Exotic has received a multi-platform series order, according to Deadline. The NBCUniversal show, whose working title is Joe Exotic, will be rolling out across three different NBCU platforms: NBC (a broadcast network), Peacock (a streaming service), and USA (a basic cable network).

No air date or other casting choices–aside from McKinnon–have yet been announced. The limited series, originally announced back in November, revisits the now familiar story popularized by the Netflix series Tiger King, in which an animal breeder and a big-cat enthusiast have a quickly escalating rivalry. There is another high-profile adaptation in the works, with Nicolas Cage as Joe Exotic. All these adaptations, including the Netflix one earlier this year, have been inspired by the second season of Wondery’s true-crime podcast Over My Dead Body.

The NBC version will be written by Etan Frankel (Friday Night Lights, Get Shorty), who will also executive produce along with McKinnon and also Wondery’s Herman Lopez, Marshall Lewy, and Aaron Hart.

The role also marks McKinnon’s second time starring in a series adapted from a podcast. She also plays Elizabeth Holmes in the upcoming Hulu drama The Dropout, inspired by the podcast telling the story of the ill-fated Silicon Valley technology company, Theranos.

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Google has announced a new round of games joining its Stadia Pro subscription service in September, including Hitman, Metro: Last Light Redux, and more.

There are six games being added to the service in total. Starting on September 1, you can download Embr, Gunsport, Hello Neighbor, Hitman, Metro: Last Light Redux, and Super Bomberman R Online with an active Stadia Pro subscription. Each game is also available to purchase individually.

While a handful of games are joining Stadia Pro, there are a few that are leaving the service. On August 31, Get Packed, Grid, and Kona will no longer be free to download. If you download these games before the end of the month, you can keep them for as long as you’re a Stadia Pro subscriber. Of course, each title can be purchased individually after they leave the vault.

There’s also a brand-new game launching on Stadia Pro this Friday. Though not part of the free offerings, Windbound drops on August 28 for Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One. Those who purchase the Launch Edition on Stadia between August 28 and September 11 will get bonus in-game content, including the Ancestral Attire, Ancestral Oar, and Ancestral Knife. It’ll retail for $30 USD.

New Stadia Pro Games For September

• Embr
• Gunsport
• Hello Neighbor
• Hitman
• Metro: Last Light Redux
• Super Bomberman R Online

Games Leaving Stadia Pro On August 31

• Get Packed
• Grid
• Kona

If you’re looking for a laptop that can handle your workday, entertainment, and gaming, then Newegg has a great deal on a laptop this week. The Asus ZenBook 15 ultra-slim laptop is $1,320–down from $1,500–with promo code 93XPR67. Boasting a 4K 15.6-inch display, the ZenBook 15 is great for design work and entertainment. It won’t be able to max out your gaming to 4K resolutions, but it’ll still work well with DLSS and lower resolutions. This deal is valid until August 31 and comes with free shipping. The laptop will arrive next week or as early as tomorrow if you increase your shipping speed.

In addition to the ultra-slim profile, the ZenBook sports a touchscreen trackpad that you can use to launch apps and multitask. The Asus ZenBook 15 also features some pretty mighty specs that make it capable of performing heavy production tasks, such as video and photo editing. It boasts an i7-10510U processor, a GTX 1650 graphics card, and 16GB of RAM as well as a 1TB PCIe SSD.

Of course, these specs aren’t strong enough to take full advantage of that 4K display while gaming. Thankfully, it’s more than capable of performing well at lower resolutions or when a game supports DLSS, which makes lower resolutions look like higher resolutions–it’s a pretty impressive technology, though it’s worth noting that it won’t look as good as a true 4K image should. DLSS is used to improve your game’s performance, so you still have a nice-looking image while also keeping that higher frame rate.

The Asus ZenBook 15 is a great laptop for those who need it for a variety of tasks, but if you’re looking for more gaming-focused recommendations, check out our guide to the best gaming laptops. Also, if you’re looking to build a PC instead, there are a number of discounts on components and hardware like graphics cards and RAM at Newegg.