The first images from the CBS All Access adaptation of Stephen King's The Stand have started to appear, with new photos from the set offering a first look at the main cast of characters, including Alexander Skarsgård as Randall Flagg. Vanity Fair shared the exclusive reel of photos showcasing "the good, the bad, and the otherworldly" in the upcoming series, created by Josh Boone and Benjamin Cavell, who is also serving as showrunner alongside Taylor Elmore. Whoopi Goldberg is among those pictured; she is starring in the series as 108-year old Mother Abigail, a blind prophet who is essential to humanity's fight for survival after a devastating plague sweeps the globe. "She is very, very righteous and very good. But really flawed I feel," Goldberg said of Mother Abigail. "She doesn't listen when God is talking to her. And she tends to go her own way because she's been like this her whole life. It takes her a little while to figure out that there's something bigger than her." Alexander Skarsgård also makes his debut as the iconic villain Randall Flagg, a charismatic rockabilly demon who is "galvanizing as a leader." His true power is said to be his ability to bring out the worst in his followers. "He's so charming and he's so handsome, and so powerful—I mean genuinely powerful, able to perform these sort of miracles where he could levitate himself and he has these actual powers," Elmore said of Skarsgård's character. "And yet he needs this adulation and this kind of worship from these people whom he's summoned to him." [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-stephen-king-remake-so-far&captions=true"] Elsewhere, Heather Graham's Rita Blakemoor is pictured alongside Jovan Adepo's Larry Underwood, a struggling, drug-addicted musician who finds his true calling after civilization collapses. Owen Teague's Harold Lauder, Odessa Young's Frannie Goldsmith and Nat Wolff's Lloyd Henreid also make appearances. These ragtag bunch of characters are placed in a post-apocalyptic world after a pandemic of a weaponized strain of influenza almost wiped out the entire world population, though the show, just like the novel, will focus on a variety of themes borne outside of the virus. "It's about the fundamental questions of what society owes the individual and what we owe to each other," said Cavell. "Over the last however-many years, we have sort of taken for granted the structure of democracy. Now, so much of that is being ripped down to the studs. It's interesting to see a story about people who are rebuilding it from the ground up." The Stand is expected to air on CBS All Access later this year. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Nintendo has revealed a new set of Power-Up Pack costumes for LEGO Mario, which introduce a variety of new game mechanics to the physical toy set. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/lego-mario-new-lego-super-mario-power-up-packs-trailer"] The Power-Up Packs each include a hat and a set of dungarees for the LEGO Mario figure to slot into, and each new costume allows him to do new things. The Fire Mario suit grants him the power to throw fireballs at enemies, activated by tilting the figure forward. The Propeller Mario suit allows Mario to fly and collect coins from mid-air. Cat Mario, meanwhile, lets the plumber climb walls while making vaguely adorable/somewhat creepy cat noises. Finally the Builder Mario suit lets you perform a damaging jump which awards coins as Mario smashes back down onto the ground. The Power-Up packs will be available starting August 1. As they are just suits, they all require the Starter Course pack to work. That pack includes 231 pieces used to build a physical Mario level, as well as the interactive LEGO Mario figure itself. That starter course can then be combined with Expansion sets such as the Piranha Plant Power Slide and Bowser’s Castle. Mario’s adventures through them can then be augmented with the use of the new Power-Up packs. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=lego-super-mario-first-look&captions=true"] LEGO Super Mario is designed as a bridge between video games and toys. Playing with the sets combines physical blocks, the use of the ‘mechanics’ provided by the interactive figure, and a player’s imagination. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter. 

Henry Cavill has been turned into an Easter Egg character in Total War: Warhammer 2, one of his favourite games. The star of The Witcher on Netflix has previously made clear how much he likes Creative Assembly's game, telling GQ he'd completed the game with six different races. He even made clear in that interview how much he looks forward to new DLC for the game arriving. Well the latest DLC, The Warden and The Paunch arrives tomorrow, May 21, and Cavill should be more excited than ever, as the expansion adds a character based on the actor and his recent work. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2017/09/25/total-war-warhammer-2-review"] As pointed out by PCGamesN, the new DLC includes a High Elf Loremaster simply named Cavill, who comes with a trait called White Wolf that gives him a bonus when fighting against large enemies (like monsters, perhaps), and even includes the flavour text "Wind's howling" (based on an oft-quoted line from The Witcher 3). If that wasn't evidence enough, PCGamesN talked to the game's director, Richard Aldridge, who confirmed the homage: "So when when I saw a certain Mr. Cavill mention that he enjoys nothing more than firing up Total War: Warhammer or painting a few models in his spare time, I thought it would be fun to somehow inject him into the game [...] With the Warden and the Paunch coming up, it felt like a good time to include Henry, and what better way than having a mighty Loremaster of Hoeth by your side with a few personal special traits to play with when starting a campaign as Eltharion?” [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/09/04/henry-cavill-was-the-first-choice-for-the-witcher"] Cavill (the real one, not the elf one) is a major gaming fan, who said he "lived and breathed" the Witcher games to prepare for his onscreen role as Geralt of Rivia, and has been painting Warhammer models to pass the time in quarantine. We here at IGN are also fans of Total War: Warhammer 2, awarding it a 9.1 review, calling it "a league above anything we’ve seen in the entire Total War series before in both design and presentation." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News and he aspires to one day be an Easter Egg in Dynasty Warriors. Follow him on Twitter.

Epic Games created a PlayStation 3 port of Gears of War 3 as part of its internal Unreal Engine testing process, but never had any intention of releasing the Xbox 360-exclusive game on the platform. The discovery of the PS3 port comes from new footage released by a former hacker known online as PixelButts. The footage, which shows a rough, buggy version of the game playing on PS3 hardware, was posted to YouTube. While the footage shows Xbox button prompts, a report from Kotaku reveals that the build is indeed running on a PlayStation 3, demonstrated by a further video sent to Kotaku by PixelButts that shows the game booting up from the PS3’s cross media bar. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2011/08/22/gears-of-war-3-intro-cinematic"] Epic Games revealed to Kotaku that the build is real. “This footage is a byproduct of Epic’s internal Unreal Engine 3 testing process, which utilized both Gears and Unreal Tournament, and was never part of any actual product work for PlayStation 3,” said a representative from the developer. The build was acquired via a data breach of Epic back in 2011.While there have previously been videos of Gears of War 3 running on a PS3, those were apparently created by hackers developing their own port using the files from the hack. PixelButt’s video differs as this is actually a PS3 build created by Epic itself for the Unreal Engine 3 testing process. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=every-ign-gears-of-war-review-ever&captions=true"] Allegedly, this version does not run on standard retail PS3 consoles and requires the extra RAM that can be found in the PS3 devkit. However, PixelButts adjusted the way Unreal Engine 3 loads data and managed to make the build work, albeit with performance issues. If you’d like to get a little more up to date with Gears of War, then check out our review of the latest game in the series, Gears Tactics. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer. You can follow him on Twitter. 

Jamie Lee Curtis is set to co-write and direct an eco-horror film, titled Mother Nature, as part of a new first-look deal with Blumhouse. Deadline reports that Curtis, who is widely regarded as one of the ultimate scream queens for playing Laurie Strode in the Halloween franchise, recently signed a three-year first-look deal with Jason Blum's Blumhouse via her production company Comet Pictures. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/10/26/jamie-lee-curtis-on-the-evolution-of-halloweens-laurie-strode"] The first project under the deal, which is for both film and television, is the just-announced Mother Nature feature film, which is said to be a horror story "centred around climate change." Curtis will be directing the film based on a script that she is co-writing with Russell Goldman, the new Head of Film and TV Development at Comet Pictures. "I'm 61 and my motto now is: 'If not now, when, if not me, who?' I'm excited to have a creative home to explore my own ideas and others. Jason and his team have made me feel welcome. Comet is ready to bring these stories to screen life," Curtis said in a statement accompanying the announcement. "Jamie is a force of nature and was a real partner on Halloween. So it's both an honor and incredibly apt that she's making her first feature film as a director with Mother Nature," Blum added in a separate statement about the new project, which is being kept largely under wraps for now. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=horror-movie-franchises-that-never-stopped-being-entertaining&captions=true"] Jamie Lee Curtis and Blumhouse had a hugely successful collaboration on the 2018 revamp of Halloween, which starred Curtis and was directed by David Gordon Green. The film had the biggest box office debut ever, for any movie in any genre, to feature a female lead character over 55 years of age. It also went on to become the highest-grossing instalment in the horror franchise, earning more than $255 million worldwide. Curtis and the Blumhouse team are bringing two more sequels to our screens over the coming years. Halloween Kills is currently scheduled for release on October 16, 2020, while Halloween Ends is set for October 15, 2021, just under one year later. Curtis is also serving as an executive producer on both of those fearsome flicks. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Adele Ankers is a Freelance Entertainment Journalist. You can reach her on Twitter.

Embracer Group - which owns the likes of Volition (Saint's Row, Red Faction), Tarsier (Little Nightmares) and Experiment 101 (Biomutant) - has 118 games in development, 69 of which are currently unannounced. The Swedish holding company (which was formerly known as THQ Nordic) revealed the news in its financial earnings report, which you can check out on the Embracer Group website. "I genuinely believe that we have one of the industry’s most exciting pipelines of upcoming games, engaging over 3,000 game developers across the world," the report reads. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/19/snowrunner-accolades-trailer"] The report mentions that, with the recent acquisition of Snowrunner developer Saber Interactive, the holding company now has 118 games in development, with 69 of those games unannounced. The holding company expects "substantial growth" in the current fiscal year, supported by upcoming releases such as Biomutant, Destroy All Humans!, Wasteland 3 and more. For more on Destroy All Humans!, check out our interview with Black Forest Games from Gamescom 2019. The report also mentions "a host of other titles that have not yet started their marketing campaigns" and refers to the beloved franchises within in its wheelhouse that the company expects will bolster their upcoming performance, such as Saints Row, Metro and Dead Island. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/06/21/destroy-all-humans-remake-preview"] Embracer Group also dwelled on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on its wokflow. "Rapid transformations to online and social distancing workflows has in general gone smoothly and have mostly only caused minor operational interruptions," the report reads. Closing out the report, Embracer Group revealed that it has raised 1.6 Billion Swedish Krona (approximately $166 million USD) for further acquisitions, and mentioned "several ongoing discussions" with studios, franchises and publishers in the games industry, suggesting there might be some more big names joining Embracer Group in the near future. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

New reports suggest this year's Call of Duty game will be titled Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and will return to the Black Ops sub-series' historical setting. The title was posted by Call of Duty leaker Okami on Twitter, and backed up by sources of Eurogamer. Eurogamer added that it will return to the series' roots, but didn't specify any specific events or locations – the real-life Cold War is regarded as having lasted from 1947-1991. Whether this is a reboot of the sub-series, or a prequel to the Black Ops story - which has since headed into the future - is still unknown. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/10/20/call-of-duty-black-ops-4-review"] Activision had already formally announced the expected 2020 instalment of Call of Duty, but didn't confirm which of its studios would act as the lead developer. Rumours at the time suggested Treyarch would be the lead, which feels ever-more likely, given it created the Black Ops sub-series. Sledgehammer and Raven are rumoured to be support studios on the project. Those same rumours claimed this was a Black Ops game set in the Cold War, and that it would restore a single-player campaign after Black Ops 4 dropped the feature. The reports coincide with the recent opening of Call of Duty: Warzone's bunkers, which have also seen dataminers discovering what seems to be a model for a Cold War-era spyplane, the U-2. We'd already heard that Warzone will evolve to accommodate multiple games in the series, with Infinity Ward's Taylor Kurosaki saying the battle royale mode "will be the through-line that connects all of the different various sub-franchises of Call of Duty." [poilib element="accentDivider"] Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News, and he was only this morning listening to excellent new Cold War-themed podcast Wind of Change, and is now hoping this game will feature Scorpions on the soundtrack. Follow him on Twitter.

The next operator coming to Rainbow Six Siege could potentially be related to Ubisoft's Splinter Cell franchise. Windows Central first spotted a post from Rainbow Six Siege dataminer Zer0Bytes_ on Reddit, who appears to have found a set of strings in the game's code that reveal the codenames for future Year 5 operators. The Year 5 Season 3 Operator is referred to as "Scout - ECH (Echelon/Third Echelon)" which suggests that the next in-game agent could be a part of the top-secret NSA organization that Splinter Cell Sam Fisher was a part of. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/05/18/rainbow-six-siege-steel-wave-operators-gameplay-gadgets-and-starter-tips-video"] Some have pointed out that this doesn't line up with the Year 5 roadmap for Rainbow Six Siege, which lists the Season 3 operator as "Classified" and offers a logo for Nighthaven, a suspect in-game organization. However, Rainbow Six Siege Product Director Roy Del Valle told Windows Central in a previously unpublished interview that the logo "shouldn't be there." "As of late, the last two weeks or something, we tweaked some things on the narrative that you'll discover, and you'll be very happy with, that does not necessarily strictly link to Nighthaven," Del Valle told Windows Central in February. This suggests that the development team's plans for the Season 3 operator may have changed since the roadmap was circulated, which makes the Splinter Cell crossover more viable. To add fuel to the fire, Siege game designer Jean-Baptiste Halle gave an interview to Dualshockers, posted just yesterday, that appears to support the idea of operators from other Ubisoft games. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2018/04/09/tom-clancys-ghost-recon-wildlands-special-operation-1-splinter-cell"] Dualshockers asked Halle which character from other Ubisoft franchises they think would work in Siege, to which Halle responded: "There is a lot of characters in Ubisoft's portfolio that could make very interesting additions in our roster", and continued, "Just keep an eye on the next Operator additions this year and you might get some interesting new people coming into the roster." Halle added, "That's all I can say so far." Halle's allusion to near-future Operator additions certainly suggests that one of the upcoming characters may well be related to a Ubisoft franchise, and all signs point to Splinter Cell. Of course, you still have to take this report with a big pinch of salt as nothing is confirmed just yet, but it's worthwhile knowledge for Splinter Cell fans keen to hear more about the franchise's future. Ubisoft hasn't released a Splinter Cell game since 2013's Blacklist, but has been very much keeping the series in the public eye, with references popping up in Assassin's Creed, and Sam Fisher's appearance in Ghost Recon Wildlands. The creative director of the last two Splinter Cell games has recently returned to Ubisoft. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Jordan Oloman is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.

Bane masks are selling out amidst the coronavirus pandemic. With many Americans still required by local governments to wear face masks or coverings while out in public, one of the most popular masks being sold online is of Tom Hardy's incarnation of the DC supervillain in The Dark Knight Rises. According to The Hollywood Reporter, both cloth and plastic Bane masks -- none of which are medically approved for pandemic protection, mind you -- have been selling out online. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2019/10/19/ranking-the-batman-movie-villains"] The trade claims Costume.com, BuyCostumes.com and HalloweenCostumes.com are all sold out of plastic Bane masks, while Etsy is selling over 150 variations of cloth Bane masks. "Looking at sales figures, the adult mask had quite a sales spike in April and early May, which is unusual for this time of year," Costume.com spokesperson David DeJac told THR. DeJac added there are still full Bane costumes available which indicates that consumers were just interested in having the mask. For more of our COVID-19 coverage, learn about how you can help and stay safe during the pandemic, and find out about all the movies and shows delayed and affected by the production shutdown. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=ranking-the-batman-movies&captions=true"]