Monthly Archives: August 2018
Fall 2018 TV Preview: 32 Shows We Can’t Wait to See
Are you ready to be overwhelmed and outnumbered on almost every front by television? That's what Fall is all about, and this year the networks, cable channels, and streaming giants are all duking it out for your precious binge time.
Netflix is unleashing more seasons of Iron Fist, Castlevania, American Vandal, and Daredevil, while also unveiling new gems like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Meanwhile, Hulu's got Sean Penn in The First and Amazon's got Julia Roberts in Homecoming.
Then there's the new Purge series, some brand new Always Sunny, a Murphy Brown revival, a Magnum P.I. reboot, a Sons of Anarchy spinoff, and a rebooted...revival?...in ABC's The Conners. Plus, more Outlander, Man in the High Castle, The Good Place, and House of Cards (the final season) - and the debut of Titans, the flagship show for DC's brand new streaming platform, DC Universe.
Marvel Comics Reveals the Fate of Wolverine
The search for Wolverine drew to a close this week, but for the recently resurrected Logan, his problems have only just begun.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Hunt for Wolverine: Dead Ends #1!
Marvel just wrapped up four separate Hunt for Wolverine miniseries, with each book featuring a different team trying to track down the wayward Wolverine and learn what he's been up to since his unexpected return. None of these teams were entirely successful, and this finale issue sees Daredevil and Iron Man travel to the X-Mansion to compare notes with Kitty Pryde.
J.K. Rowling Felt ‘Quite Sentimental’ Going Back to Hogwarts in New Teaser Feature
The sequel to the first Fantastic Beasts film will be set among more of the iconic places from the Harry Potter world than were in the first film – including Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. To celebrate heading Back to Hogwarts, Warner Bros. has released a behind-the-scenes teaser video with commentary from the stars of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald.
"I loved going back to Hogwarts. Of course, I did," creator and screenwriter J.K. Rowling said. "It looks very familiar to anyone who saw the Potter movies. But, obviously, the teaching staff are different."
"Those names, the stories, the histories, that sit in the back of our mind from the Potter series begin to weave their way into Beasts," Eddie Redmayne said.
How Adventure Time Inspired a New Generation of Creators
Adventure Time is embarking on its final quest on September 3, with the fate of Candy Kingdom hanging in the balance.
To commemorate Jake and Finn's fantastical journey, IGN has an exclusive clip from the upcoming Adventure Time: The Final Seasons DVD, which goes on sale September 4 and includes every episode from Seasons 8, 9 and 10 in addition to a behind-the-scenes featurette, animatics and song demos from the last run of episodes.
Looking back at the legacy of Adventure Time, it's impressive to realize how many of the artists, writers and producers who worked on the series went on to create their own shows because of the lessons they learned in the Land of Ooo. In the exclusive video below, Summer Camp Island creator Julia Pott, Steven Universe creator Rebecca Sugar, and OK KO! Let's Be Heroes creator Ian Jones-Quarty and co-EP Toby Jones reminisce about the impact the series had on them along with executive producer Adam Muto and voice artist Ashly Burch.
Check Out Fortnite’s Awesomely Detailed PAX Mini-Golf Course
After building a theme park at Gamescom 2018, Epic Games' Fortnite has opted for a bit of sport for its PAX West 2018 showing - namely, a tough, detailed mini-golf course.
IGN's intrepid golfers hit the Lazy links at PAX for nine holes of Fortnite-inspired mini-golf. Check out dozens of photos of the golf course below to see the tricky shots we had to make to keep somewhat around par.
For more on Fortnite, stay tuned to our in-depth video tour of the golf course, and make sure you check out the details on the latest announced Fortnite event, High Stakes.
The Top 10 Movies at the Summer 2018 Domestic Box Office
With Labor Day upon us and summer coming to a close, let's look back at how Hollywood fared at the North American box office this past season. Disney had four of the Top 10 movies released at the domestic box office this summer, with Avengers: Infinity War leading the pack with $678.7 million.
It's been a matter of debate, however, whether Infinity War even counts as a summer movie since Disney bumped its release from May 4th to April 27th. In the past, a film released on the last weekend in April was a spring release, but Hollywood continues to blur the lines between actual seasons and "movie" seasons. If we were being strict about the actual definition of "summer" then only movies released between June 21 and September 22, 2018, would count as summer movies. But Hollywood doesn't do that. And since IGN included Infinity War in its summer movie preview, we're going to keep it defined as one for the purposes of this box office wrap-up.
Marvel Reveals Hidden Connection Between Wolverine and Venom
This week Marvel revealed that Wolverine and Venom have a history going back much further than anyone realized.
Warning: this article contains spoilers for Web of Venom: Ve'Nam #1!
Web of Venom: Ve'Nam is a spinoff of the current Venom comic, one that delves deeper into Venom's newly expanded mythology. Recently, Eddie Brock learned that his symbiote wasn't the first to arrive on Earth. The US military created an entire team of symbiote-powered super-soldiers during the Vietnam War. This issue sheds a bit more light on the history of this ill-fated team.
The Conners: First On-Set Photo of the Roseanne Spinoff Released
ABC has released the first on-set photo of the cast at what appears to be the first table read for the Roseanne spinoff, The Conners, which will not be featuring Roseanne Barr.
Revealed via The Conners Twitter account, the picture was tweeted with the words "#TheConners: Day 1" and features, from left to right: Sara Gilbert, Jayden Rey, Michael Fishman, Ames McNamara, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Lecy Goranson, and Emma Kenney.
One of Dota’s Weirdest Heroes Is Becoming One of Artifacts Craziest Cards
Not all existing Dota 2 heroes are guaranteed to make it into Valve’s next game, Artifact, but this crafty Geomancer, Meepo, is confirmed to get a card counterpart, and IGN has the first details on his cards.
In Artifact, almost every known hero card has either a passive or active ability and a signature spell card. Meepo is unique in that his card has both an active and a passive. His active ability, Poof, allows Meepo to move to an allied Meepos lane and deal 2 damage to his new enemy neighbors. His passive or “continuous effect” ability, United We Fall, requires that if Meepo dies, allied Meepos in other lanes die too.
Like in Dota 2, Meepo’s signature spell allows him to summon another Meepo. You can see the spell card and the art for other Meepo in the slideshow below. Each hero comes with three copies of their signature spell card, so there’s potential to have four Meepos across the board at once.
How Valve Won’t Let Artifact’s Marketplace Get Crazy Expensive
Artifact, the next game from Half-Life developer Valve, is decidedly bucking digital card game trends. Not only is it not free-to-play, it’s not going to have any kind of free in-game currency to spend on cards -- a decision Valve tells me is to avoid the grind that can make other CCGs feel like a job instead of a game.
“At its core, we want you to play the game because you enjoy playing the game,” programmer Brandon Reinhart told me when I visited Valve last week. They don’t want you to feel obligated to do daily quests just so you have enough gold to get a pack that might have the card you want. They want you to just play the game.
So instead of the usual digital model, Artifact is following a physical one like that of Magic: The Gathering -- whose creator, Richard Garfield, is also the lead designer of Artifact. It will have a $20 price tag that gets you two full decks and 10 card packs, and all card packs after that cost $2 each.