Monthly Archives: November 2015
Star Wars Spot Reveals New Character and a Familiar Face
We're less than a month away from the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the movie's marketing machine has begun steadily unleashing TV commercials for it.
This latest TV spot (embedded below) features Resistance fighter pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and his Red Squad and Blue Squad X-Wing pilots, Jessika Pava and Return of the Jedi's Nien Nunb. (Mike Quinn, who did the puppet work for Nien in ROTJ, recently confirmed that he's back to work on the character in Force Awakens.)
The video also shows poor little BB-8 getting tossed around the Millennium Falcon like a sock in a washing machine.
Mockingjay 2 Has Hunger Games Franchise’s Lowest Opening
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 debuted with an estimated $101 million at the domestic box office this weekend, a mighty bow that was nevertheless the franchise's lowest opening. Its worldwide weekend total is projected at $247 million.
The franchise's biggest domestic opening was Catching Fire ($158.1 million), followed by The Hunger Games ($152.5 million), and Mockingjay, Part 1 ($121.9 million).
And after two weeks atop the North American box office, SPECTRE dropped to second place. The 24th James Bond film has thus far grossed $153.7 million domestically and has a worldwide cume of $677.8 million.
The Best Black Friday Deals You Can Get Right Now
Welcome to IGN's Black Friday coverage. Below are our hand picked choices of the very best Black Friday deals. You can see every Black Friday deal broken down by retailer in our Black Friday 2015 wiki.
Watch this page for new Amazon Lightning Deals.
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The Good Dinosaur: Anna Paquin on Her Stereotype-Subverting T-Rex
Anna Paquin can't help but play with the toy of her T-Rex character Ramsey as she sits in an empty hotel conference room waiting to start talking about her role in The Good Dinosaur. The 33-year-old actress moves the plastic dinosaur's short arms back and forth as she sits at a table for our interview, confessing of the figure, "She's pretty cool, isn't she?"
The same can be said for the character in the movie, who, like the shark Bruce in Finding Nemo, is a seeming predator who turns into a friendly ally. Paquin was thrilled to play a female character who "gets to be tough and strong and hold her own with the guys," and appreciated the positive message the T-Rex storyline sends to young viewers. "A lot about this little posse of T-Rexes is just really cool and, like most Pixar things, going to take people by surprise.," she said.
Halo 5 DLC Teaser Showcases New Weapon, Armor
343 Industries has released a teaser for Halo 5: Guardian's upcoming DLC, confirming more than just Forge tools are being added to its Xbox One-exclusive shooter in December.
The tease, first spotted by Design & Trend, can be found at the conclusion of the latest Halo 5 livestream, in which the studio provides an early glimpse at new armor, weapon skins, and a whole lot more.
In addition to what appears to be the iconic M41 SSR Rocket Launcher, we also get a glimpse at the Mark IV helmet, black and gold weapon skins, and even a new space-themed setting, presumably for use in Forge.
Transformers’ Writer to Lead G.I. Joe, Micronauts Writers Rooms
Akiva Goldsman has signed on to lead "writer's rooms" for the forthcoming G.I. Joe and Micronauts movies. The experiment worked well enough in expanding the Transformers' movie universe, and Hasbro and Paramount hope to create the same success with their upcoming films.
Because of these writer's rooms, Goldsman will not write Transformers 5. Deadline reports that Paramount is in talks with Art Marcum and Matt Holloway, of Iron Man, and Ken Nolan, of Black Hawk Down. All three participated in the Transformers' writer's rooms thus far. This shift, Deadline writes, is "cemented by Paramount, Hasbro, Michael Bay, Steven Spielberg and producers Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Don Murphy."
Dota 2’s $3 Million Tournament Ends With an Upset and an Announcement
The winners of the first-ever Dota 2 Major tournament have been crowned. The 4-month-old squad OG's victory over fan favorite Team Secret was announced alongside details of the next Major in Shanghai.
This makes OG and Secret the first finalists of the Frankfurt Major, itself the first of Dota 2 developer Valve's new series of sanctioned tournaments. Previously, Valve's only event was a year-end championship called The International. Starting this year the Frankfurt Major and two other multi-million dollar tournaments now lead into that main event.
"Following the success of the Dota 2 Asia Championships (DAC) last year, Perfect World will be hosting The Shanghai Major which will take place at the Mercedes Benz Arena from March 2-6, 2016," the official Dota 2 blog reads.
Streaming Jessica Jones? Watch Our Cast Interviews
It’s a big weekend for Marvel fans as Jessica Jones, the second Netflix series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, has debuted. Many of us are spending the calm before the Thanksgiving storm powering through all 13 episodes of the show. But what to do once you’ve finished there (aside from reading our episode reviews before going back and watching them again from the start?). Well, why not check out some of our interviews with the cast and creators of the series?
We’ve got chats with Krysten Ritter (Jessica herself!), Mike Colter (Luke Cage), David Tennant (Kilgrave), Rachael Taylor (Trish "Patsy" Walker), Carrie-Anne Moss (Jeri Hogarth), Wil Traval (Will Simpson), Erin Moriarty (Hope Shlottman), Eka Darville (Malcolm), showrunner Melissa Rosenberg and Marvel’s very own Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada. Watch all the interviews in our video playlist below:
PayDay 2 Developer Issues an Apology
Overkill Software, developer of PayDay 2, has issued an apology over its recent response to the handling of controversial microtransactions.
Producer Almir Listo took to PayDay 2's Steam page to apologize on behalf of Overkill, calling the weeks since the controversy "some of the most challenging in the history of this community." "For all the distress we've caused the past few weeks, I'd just like to take the time and say that we’re sorry," said Listo. "We've done a lot of things right in the past, but these past few weeks we screwed up.
"We need to get better at many things, and we will do our best to improve as soon as possible."
Vin Diesel Announces New Riddick Sequel and TV Series
Vin Diesel has announced a new television series based on the Chronicles of Riddick fictional universe. Diesel also announced David Twohy has started work on the next installment in the Riddick film series.
On his Instagram, Diesel announced the series, titled Merc City, "will follow the Mercs and Bounty Hunters of the Riddick Universe."
Diesel has been busy with entertainment spin-offs. The Merc City series is only one such franchise in which Vin Diesel is involved. Speaking to Variety earlier in the month, Diesel said he's working right now on spin-offs of the Fast & the Furious film franchise.