Monthly Archives: March 2018
Orcs Must Die! Developer Lays Off Staff
Robot Entertainment has let go 30 members of staff in a strategic decision that sees the studio shift its focus from two projects to just one.
"Over the past 18 months, our studio has had two teams working on different projects," said the studio's CEO Patrick Hudson. "Today, the company is making a strategic shift to focus on a single internal game project.
"Unfortunately, that means we need to resize our team to fit only one project. We've made the very difficult decision to let go of over 30 of our very talented and dedicated developers."
According to the company's LinkedIn profile, the studio has 65 members of staff, meaning the layoffs will see almost half its employees cut.
WTF Is Darkseid Doing On the Justice League?
Three new Justice League titles will be spinning out of the end of Dark Nights: Metal and the subsequent Justice League: No Justice mini-series, which is cool but not entirely unexpected news, save for one detail: Darkseid, the most dangerous villain in the DC Universe, will be joining one of the teams. It turned heads when Lex Luthor joined the Justice League in 2016, but he at least had Earth's best interest in mind, in his own twisted way. Darkseid is in a whole other league of evil.
The three new teams will be your classic Justice League squad, the Justice League Dark to combat supernatural threats, and then the one that recruits Darkseid, Justice League Odyssey, which writer Joshua Williamson has nicknamed “Justice League Space.”
John Cena on Board to Star in Duke Nukem Movie
John Cena is on board to star in the upcoming Duke Nukem movie.
Producer Andrew Form confirmed in an interview with CinemaBlend that, as of right now, the WWE superstar is set to star in the video game-inspired movie.
"He is. Yes. We don't have a script yet, so that is confirmed at this point but if he reads the script and he doesn't like the script I'm sure there's ways that he could pull out, but right now he's our guy," Form said.
Cena in Daddy's Home 2
Overwatch World Cup 2018 Announced
Blizzard has announced the start of this year's Overwatch World Cup.
According to the official Overwatch League website, the average skill rating (SR) of the top 150 players from each country will be tracked starting today and continuing until the end of Competitive Season 9 on April 28.
The top 20 countries will be invited to participate in the competition alongside France, South Korea, Thailand, and the United States, which have been chosen as host countries and received automatic qualification.
The qualifying countries will form their own National Competition Committees made up of a General Manager selected by Blizzard and a Coach and Community Lead who will both be selected by votes.
Spielberg Asks Carl’s Jr. Not to Name a Burger After Him
Carl's Jr. went on a quest today to deliver Steven Spielberg one of its "SpielBurgers," and while the filmmaker said the fast food chain's Charbroiled Sliders are "pretty good" he doesn't want them named after him.
Earlier today, the official Carl's Jr. Twitter account posted:
The Surprising Link Between Santa Clarita Diet and The Addams Family
It must have been alarming to turn on the TV in the 1960s and see a sitcom that centered on a family who was otherwise normal, except for the fact that they looked like they had just risen from the dead with sunken eyes, pale skin, and expressionless faces. But they would take out the trash, mow their lawn, and do "regular" things around the neighborhood like everyone else. To say that the side-by-side 1964 debuts of The Munsters and The Addams Family shook up primetime television would be an understatement. At the time, the small screen had been saturated with safe, wholesome narratives such as The Andy Griffith Show and The Donna Reed Show. This new wave of macabre family TV was radical.
Reasons Behind New Mutants, Dark Phoenix Delays Reportedly Revealed
The reasons behind the recent delays for The New Mutants and X-Men: Dark Phoenix have reportedly been revealed.
According to Collider, the latest mainline X-Men film was pushed back from its original release date of November 2, 2018 to February 14, 2019 because there isn't enough time to complete reshoots.
The film's A-list cast, which includes the likes of Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence, won't be free until August or September of this year. This would have left director-writer Simon Kinberg only a few months to complete visual effects for the scenes.
Marvel Comics Announces Infinity Wars
Marvel Comics has revealed the name of their upcoming event, Infinity Wars, along with the creative team: writer Gerry Duggan, artist Mike Deodato Jr., and colorist Frank Martin. Duggan has been building up to a large-scale Infinity Stone story in his now-ended Guardians of the Galaxy comic and in the Infinity Countdown mini-series, and now we know that it will lead to Infinity Wars.
The cover reveals the main players in the event: Adam Warlock, Doctor Strange, Gamora, Captain Marvel, Peter Quill, Loki and Thanos. There also appears to be a hooded character with a mask in the shape of the "infinity" symbol.
Art by Mike Deodato Jr and Frank Martin. (Marvel Comics)
Pillars of Eternity 2 Is More Of What Made Its Predecessor Great
For all of the years of experience Obsidian has across a multitude of platforms and IPs, they’ve never once created a sequel to one of their own original properties. That is, until now. Last week, Obsidian took the time to show me how Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire takes what worked in the original, dramatically expands it, and aims to establish the franchise at the top of the pile among the industry’s elite roleplaying series.
The first and most immediately obvious change is a big one: Deadfire is a legitimate open-world game this time around. In the first Pillars of Eternity, the world was split into a handful of regions that could be openly explored, but for the most part it was a relatively linear affair. But even as an open-world game, Deadfire maintains that hand-crafted feel. There is zero random or procedural generation as each and every combat encounter is hand-placed by the designers. In fact, every single NPC has voiced dialogue and a hand-drawn portrait to really lend a sense of intimacy to every situation.
Hulu Passes on Locke and Key TV Series, But There’s Still Hope
IGN has confirmed Hulu has passed on the Locke and Key pilot, but there still might be hope for the potential series.
One of the pilot's stars Samantha Mathis revealed to Cultured Vultures that Locke and Key did not get picked up by Hulu after the network had ordered a pilot. However, the show's producers may still be shopping the series around to other streaming services, such as Netflix and Apple.
THR reports WME has been hosting screenings of the pilot for other networks to consider picking the series up. According to their report, seven scripts for the series have already been written.