Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint haven't reprised their roles of Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley for a decade now, but the director of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Chris Columbus, wants to bring the gang back together for one more ride.

Speaking to Variety, Columbus said he would love to work on a movie adaptation of The Cursed Child, a 2016 Harry Potter play that takes place 19 years after the final book in the series ends.

"I would love to direct 'The Cursed Child,'" Columbus said. "It’s a great play and the kids are actually the right age to play those roles. It’s a small fantasy of mine."

Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint are all in their early 30s, making them about the right age to play Harry, Ron, and Hermione on the big screen once again for this story. The Cursed Child focuses on Harry and Draco Malfoy's children, with the original heroes serving as supporting characters. The play was a big hit on Broadway, setting records when it opened in 2018.

Columbus directed 2001's The Sorcerer's Stone and 2002's sequel, The Chamber of Secrets. He also served as producer on Prisoner of Azkaban. David Yates took over directing duties for the final four Harry Potter movies, and also directed the first two Fantastic Beasts movies.

Yates is next helming The Secrets of Dumbledore, the third movie in the Fantastic Beasts spinoff series set to be released next year.

The original play was written by Jack Thorne, along with John Tiffany and Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, though it's been a conflicting time for Harry Potter fans as J.K. Rowling has become a major proponent of anti-transgender rhetoric.

While it's unknown if a movie version of The Cursed Child will ever become a reality, Warner Bros. is still working on a potential Harry Potter TV series, and the video game Hogwarts Legacy, which will reportedly allow players to create transgender characters.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Marvel’s Eternals features a lot of firsts, including the MCU’s first (PG-13) sex scene and first gay superhero. But these may have led several countries, including Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, to ban the latest Marvel movie ahead of its November 11 release date.

According to Variety, this appears to be a last-minute decision as the region has been promoting Eternals for the November release. But sources confirmed that Eternals will no longer be playing in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, though tickets are still available in the UAE.

Different regions will sometimes censor or alter movies for content that doesn’t fall in line with their local guidelines. In the case of several Arab nations, movies with sex, homosexuality, and possible religious issues, are cut to meet censorship rules.

According to Variety, Disney was unwilling to alter the movie to become compliant with local guidelines and has since been removed from their release schedules.

Eternals features Phastos, the first gay superhero in an MCU film. Played by Brian Tyree Henry, Phastos is seen living a domestic life with his husband and child when he’s recruited by the other Eternals to once again fend of the Deviants.

Other Marvel films like Black Widow and Shang-Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings have not been given release dates in key markets like China.

Check out IGN’s Eternals review for our take on the cosmic MCU adventure, or our Eternals explainer to help you get up to speed on Marvel's newest heroes before the movie premiers in North America this weekend.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Marvel’s Eternals features a lot of firsts, including the MCU’s first (PG-13) sex scene and first gay superhero. But these may have led several countries, including Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, to ban the latest Marvel movie ahead of its November 11 release date.

According to Variety, this appears to be a last-minute decision as the region has been promoting Eternals for the November release. But sources confirmed that Eternals will no longer be playing in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, though tickets are still available in the UAE.

Different regions will sometimes censor or alter movies for content that doesn’t fall in line with their local guidelines. In the case of several Arab nations, movies with sex, homosexuality, and possible religious issues, are cut to meet censorship rules.

According to Variety, Disney was unwilling to alter the movie to become compliant with local guidelines and has since been removed from their release schedules.

Eternals features Phastos, the first gay superhero in an MCU film. Played by Brian Tyree Henry, Phastos is seen living a domestic life with his husband and child when he’s recruited by the other Eternals to once again fend of the Deviants.

Other Marvel films like Black Widow and Shang-Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings have not been given release dates in key markets like China.

Check out IGN’s Eternals review for our take on the cosmic MCU adventure, or our Eternals explainer to help you get up to speed on Marvel's newest heroes before the movie premiers in North America this weekend.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Are we ever going to get Mario Kart 9? It's tough to say because Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch keeps selling gangbusters.

According to Nintendo's financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year ending in March 2022, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold 38.74 million copies on Nintendo Switch. It has now surpassed the lifetime sales of Mario Kart Wii, which is at 37.38 million copies.

The game has even outsold Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which sits at 34.85 million copies sold. It was a huge hit last year, especially since it launched on the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mario Kart 8 originally was released in May 2014 for Wii U but eventually was ported over to Nintendo Switch as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in April 2017. In fact, both versions of the game were such a hit that combined, Mario Kart 8 is the best-selling racing game in US history. I mean, even the US President, Joe Biden, plays it.

Nintendo Switch has been on a roll lately. It was recently revealed that the console has sold another 8.3 million units over the past six months, which now brings its total lifetime sales to 93 million. However, it looks like sales will start slowing down a little bit since there is an ongoing semiconductor shortage.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

Are we ever going to get Mario Kart 9? It's tough to say because Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch keeps selling gangbusters.

According to Nintendo's financial results for the second quarter of the fiscal year ending in March 2022, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has sold 38.74 million copies on Nintendo Switch. It has now surpassed the lifetime sales of Mario Kart Wii, which is at 37.38 million copies.

The game has even outsold Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which sits at 34.85 million copies sold. It was a huge hit last year, especially since it launched on the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mario Kart 8 originally was released in May 2014 for Wii U but eventually was ported over to Nintendo Switch as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe in April 2017. In fact, both versions of the game were such a hit that combined, Mario Kart 8 is the best-selling racing game in US history. I mean, even the US President, Joe Biden, plays it.

Nintendo Switch has been on a roll lately. It was recently revealed that the console has sold another 8.3 million units over the past six months, which now brings its total lifetime sales to 93 million. However, it looks like sales will start slowing down a little bit since there is an ongoing semiconductor shortage.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

A crew member on the production of Indiana Jones 5 has been found dead in Morocco, where filming has been taking place, New York Post reports.

Nic Cupac, a 54-year-old grip on the film's 2nd unit, was found dead in his hotel room in the city of Fes, Walt Disney Studios told New York Post on Thursday.

Disney stated that Cupac's death was not related to the production of the film. A specific cause of death has not been released.

“Our hearts go out to the family and friends of Nic Cupac, an incredibly talented colleague and member of the film community who will be greatly missed,” a representative for the film told The Post.

Cupac was a longtime production worker, with credits on the Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, and Star Wars franchises. The Post reports that he only recently traveled to Morocco to work on Indiana Jones 5. Cupac's work included building and maintaining the rigs that supported camera equipment during shooting.

Production on Indiana Jones 5 has been infamously troubled, thanks in part to the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors. Morocco recently banned flights to and from the UK in response to a surge of COVID cases, BBC reports. The 79-year-old Harrison Ford was also injured while rehearsing for a fight scene, forcing him to step away from production for three months. Steven Spielberg was also originally attached to direct (making it his fifth Indiana Jones film) but stepped down to a producer role in February of 2020 and was replaced by Ford vs. Ferrari and Logan director James Mangold. Spielberg's take on Indiana Jones 5 reportedly fell apart due to script disagreements.

Indiana Jones 5 was originally planned to release in July 2021 but has since been delayed to June 30, 2023, along with numerous Marvel films. It's unknown if Cupac's death will further delay production.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer for IGN.

Amazon Games has provided its New World community with an update on many of the features in the game that have experienced issues including character transfers, the game's economy, and much more.

In a developer blog post published to the game's forums, a community manager for New World explained that the team had been working hard to investigate several problems with the MMO before providing an update to fans on the issues that it believes are most critical to the community.

Following recent reports that New World has been suffering from a deflationary currency crisis, the blog post spoke further about the current state of the game's economy and updated fans on what changes the development team would be making going forward.

"From a data standpoint, the economy is performing within acceptable levels," explains the post. "All servers are creating more money than is being removed, and by a good margin. However, the economy is tighter at the end-game currently. When we look at surplus income generated by level, it’s very high in the 1-35 level range, decent in the 40-59 range, and gets narrow at 60. This means that as more players get to level 60, this will start to put more pressure on the economy."

With that in mind, the developer says that it has made two big changes that will help the game's economy going forward. The first of these came in the form of fixing a bug that affected New World's Azoth staff and prevented players from being able to complete some of the end-game features that generated reasonable levels of gold. The second, and more recent change, comes with reintroducing New World's Outpost Rush. This large-scale 20 v 20 PvP experience is available to players at level 60 in the game and according to the developers should go a long way in helping end-game players to find a source of income.

In addition to the changes listed above, the studio has announced further tweaks that it is making in a bid to strengthen the in-game economy. Among a number of other factors, these included extending New World's housing tax period from 5 to 7 days and linking trading posts, a change that the studio says will help to bolster the economy in less traveled territories across the game.

Economy aside, the studio also spoke further about the game's full server issues and problems with character transfers. Since its initial release, the developer has made multiple efforts to resolve server issues and allow players the ability to play with their pre-established friends by transferring their characters between servers in the game.

"It is important to us that everyone have the opportunity to choose which server they are playing on," the developer blog reads. "By the time you are reading this, character transfers will have been re-enabled and most players should be able to move their characters."

"We will continue to monitor your feedback after this wave of Character Transfers is complete and offer additional Transfers if needed. We are also working on region-to-region Character Transfers, but it is difficult to solve and will take time."

To avoid further issues in the future, the studio says that it is monitoring the number of active users within the game's servers to ensure that its 'Full Server Status' continues to be accurate. In addition, the statement also confirmed that going forward, players will receive a 24 hour notice period before a server is marked as full meaning that both existing and new players would have more information to go by before finding out that a server couldn't be joined.

This article has touched upon several of the topics discussed in the developer's blog post. However, the full blog contained information on a range of further issues including property taxes, faction tokens, and much, much more. For more from New World, make sure to check out our dedicated IGN page for the game, which includes a number of helpful tips and guides for the MMO.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

After months and months of waiting, further complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Spider-Man is finally coming to Marvel's Avengers on November 30, exclusively for PlayStation players.

Spider-Man is releasing as part of the Spider-Man: With Great Power Hero Event in Marvel's Avengers, which will tell the story of Spider-Man through unlockable challenges.

Surprisingly, Square-Enix made the release date announcement as only a small part of its broader content roadmap update published Thursday.

In Spider-Man's story mode, Peter Parker discovers that A.I.M. plans to acquire tech that would make their robot army invincible, prompting Spidey to join forces with Ms. Marvel and Black Widow, who remain unaware of his identity. One of Spider-Man's big conflicts throughout his journey will be whether to stay a solo superhero or to lend his strength to the Avengers Initiative.

Spider-Man being a PlayStation exclusive stirred up a fair amount of controversy in the Marvel's Avengers player community, with some worrying he won't be a very substantial character since only a portion of players will have access to him. Marvel's Avengers coming to Game Pass for both Xbox and PC just last September, has only widened that gap.

The November 30 update brings several new features for all players, thankfully. A new Klaw raid set after the events of War for Wakanda will have the Avengers returning to the Vibranium Mound to defeat Klaw once and for all.

Here's what else to expect:

• Crystal Dynamics is also increasing maximum player power levels from 150 to 175.
• Gear recycling will let you recycle higher-powered gear to boost your current gear if you prefer to keep your current look.
• Shipments: A new path for players to earn cosmetics and other items via gameplay. Shipments will cost 500 units (in-game currency) and pulls from a collection of in-game items, with a chance to contain an outfit that can't be acquired any other way. Thankfully, you can see what's in the shipment before purchasing it, and you're guaranteed to get a special outfit in every 100 Shipments. Crystal Dynamics says it'll be sharing more information about this feature in the future.
• Per-hero weekly objectives: Rather than using only one hero per week to farm challenges, you can farm rewards with each hero now. Crystal Dynamics says it's exploring applying this change to other parts of Marvel's Avengers as well.

We'll have to wait and see if Spider-Man truly shakes up the Marvel's Avengers community. For now, Square Enix had some less-than-kind words for the troubled games-as-a-service superhero adventure. The publisher called negative reception to the game a "disappointing outcome," the implication being that Crystal Dynamics' roots as a single-player game studio didn't mesh well enough with a games-as-a-service project.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/friendly neighborhood freelancer for IGN.

EA's CEO has said that he believes that NFTs will be an important part of the games industry in the future.

In an earnings call this week, EA CEO Andrew Wilson was asked about the company's stance on "play-to-earn" games and NFTs. "I think the play to earn or the NFT conversation is still really, really early," he said. But he went on to note "I do think it will be an important part of the future of our industry."

"As a company, we have been leaders in the creation of digital content that has real collectible value in the embedding of that content as part of live services," he continued. "What we know about collection over time is the collectibility is far more valuable to the collector where the collected item has utility. And I think that in the context of the games that we create and the live services that we offer, collectible digital content is going to play a meaningful part in our future."

He concluded by telling those on the call that they "should expect us to kind of think more innovatively and creatively about that on a go-forward basis."

Those collections to which Wilson refers can easily include FIFA Ultimate Team, the game mode in which players collect cards from loot box-style systems. But it could easily be envisioned as working across games, such as NFTs for cosmetics in Apex Legends.

NFTs and cryptocurrencies are currently a largely unregulated entity often exploited for scam purposes, and have been accused as having a huge negative impact on the environment due to the energy consumed during the electronic mining of currency. Steam has already banned blockchain games, but Ubisoft already has plans to create blockchain games with play-to-earn features. Reactions to NFT and crypto elements in games has been mixed; while the systems are popular in some areas of internet culture, a recent Dead by Daylight NFT experiment did not go down well with fans.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

FromSoftware has released 15 minutes of new gameplay footage from Elden Ring, the studio's highly anticipated next game.

The new gameplay can currently be watched over on YouTube and Twitch.

Elden Ring will release on February 25, 2022, although those who signed up for the closed network test may be able to play a small section from November 12-14. Previously, IGN was able to see 15 minutes of gameplay which we spoke about in the first Elden Ring preview. Over time, we've learned a lot about Elden Ring, including its soul-collecting mechanic, and how its large, free-form map works.

This story is developing...