Timothy Dalton will star in the Yellowstone prequel series, 1923. According to Variety, the former 007 will star as Donald Whitfield – a “powerful, self-confident man who reeks of wealth and the lack of empathy it requires to attain it.”

As a prequel to Yellowstone, 1923 is set explore how “pandemics, historic drought, the end of Prohibition, and the Great Depression all plague the mountain west and the Duttons who call it home.”

Dalton is just the latest A-lister to join the Yellowstone prequel, alongside the likes of Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren.

Dalton is perhaps best known as James Bond in the likes of The Living Daylights and License to Kill but has flexed his acting chops in more villainous roles, including Hot Fuzz and The Rocketeer.

Meanwhile, Yellowstone will be heading into its fifth season next month. Want to read more about Yellowstone? Check out IGN’s top 25 westerns of all time.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

A Gangs of New York TV show is being developed with Martin Scorsese. According to Deadline, the upcoming show is based on the 1927 non-fiction book by Herbert Asbury and will focus on new characters that did not appear in the 2002 movie.

Scorsese was previously attached to another adaptation of Gangs of New York back in 2013.

“This time and era of America’s history and heritage is rich with characters and stories that we could not fully explore in a two-hour film,” he said at the time. “A television series allows us the time and creative freedom to bring this colorful world, and all the implications it had and still does on our society, to life.”

Scorsese is reportedly attached to direct the first two episodes and is also on board as executive producer. Brett Leonard wrote the script.

The original book details various confrontations between rival New York gangs during the mid-to-late 1800s before the Italian-American Mafia began to dominate in the 1920s. However, Scorsese has proven to be rather adept at adapting these periods, having won an Emmy for the pilot episode of Boardwalk Empire.

Gangs of New York itself was nominated for 10 Academy Awards.

It’s said that Scorsese “responded” to Leonard’s script which was being developed at Miramax, and decided to join the project as a result. Rick Yorn and Chris Donnelly are also on board as executive producers.

It’s currently unknown where the series will land and will be taken out to buyers later this month.

IGN’s review of Gangs of New York gave it 8/10 and said: “Gangs of New York is a good, but not great movie about the birth of this nation that lives off its amazing visuals. As a whole, the film lacks the flow and build-up of many of Scorsese's past pictures, but the sets, the costumes, the shots -- everything here is a joy to behold. Day-Lewis' Butcher overpowers every other character in the movie, which serves to illustrate Vallon's attraction to him, but also painfully shows that the ‘hero’ in this picture is simply not compelling enough.”

Want to read more about Gangs of New York? Find out about Scorsese’s previous run at a Gangs of New York series as well as where it sits in our essential Scorsese movies.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Toad will be getting his very own song in The Super Mario Bros. Movie.

During an interview with Variety, Keegan-Michael Key was asked whether Toad gets to sing in the upcoming video game adaptation.

“He does,” he said. “I got to improvise a song in Super Mario Bros. which was an absolute blast. That was just a stick of fun, that whole thing.”

Notably, Toad appeared in the recent trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie alongside Mario and Bowser… but while we have heard him speaking, we’re yet to find out if his singing voice is any good.

“I was working on the voice with my partner and trying to find the voice through the internal journey of the character,” he said of his voice work. “And then with the directors, we sprinkled some things in, we moved it around.”

Although Chris Pratt has come under fire for his Mario voice sounding a lot like… well… his normal voice, Key’s voice work involved a bit more experimentation.

“There was something about the timbre,” he said. “I wanted it higher and higher and higher. And that’s where we ended up, and I’m really happy with where we ended up.”

What Toad will sing in the movie remains to be seen… but co-star Jack Black has also made some musical allusions when it comes to his role in the movie.

“I did bring some of my heavy metal roots,” Black said. “Bowser is kind of like a heavy metal rockstar, a big, strong, and scary rockstar. And I did a little bit of rocking. I think you’ll be surprised to see that Bowser has a musical side. After the movie comes out, I might take it to Broadway.”

Want to read more about The Super Mario Bros. Movie? Check out the French dubbed trailer that sounds a lot more like Mario, as well as our first look at Princess Peach.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Liam Neeson might be heading up the Police Squad in a Naked Gun revival.

According to Deadline, the aging action star, who popularized old-man action movies such as Taken, Non-Stop, and Honest Thief, is in talks for a Naked Gun reboot.

Akiva Schaffer, who directed Lonely Island, is expected to direct the reboot.

Although plot details are firmly under wraps, it’s said that Neeson could be playing the son of Frank Drebin – the original star of the Naked Gun movies, played by Leslie Nielson.

The Naked Gun was originally released in 1988 – a slapstick comedy following Lieutenant Frank Drebin (Nielson) as he uncovers a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth II during a state visit to Los Angeles. The film was based on the 1982 TV series, Police Squad, which was canceled after just 6 episodes.

Of course, The Naked Gun was a huge success, effectively relaunching Nielson’s career and spawning two additional sequels: The Naked Gun 2 1/2 and The Naked Gun 33 1/3.

Although the upcoming reboot hasn’t yet been greenlit, it’s said that the project is “heading in that direction” once Neeson is on board. Dan Gregor and Doug Mand will apparently write the script while Mark Hentemann and Alec Sulkin wrote a previous draft. Seth MacFarlane and Erica Huggins are on board as producers while Schaffer also joins as executive producer.

According to Deadline, talk of a reboot began as far back as 2010 following the death of the original movie’s star, Leslie Nielson. It’s also said that Neeson committed to the reboot after being approached by Seth MacFarlane, who he has previously worked with on Family Guy, Ted 2, and The Orville.

IGN’s review of The Naked Gun gave it 7/10 and said: “The Naked Gun isn't quite as solid as Airplane!, but it's a very funny spoof of your traditional cop drama/film noir driven by Leslie Nielsen's dynamic straight-faced performance.”

Want to read more about The Naked Gun? Check out why the Naked Gun reboot won’t be a remake as well as who almost starred in the upcoming reboot.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Pyramid Head, who is arguably the most terrifying and iconic villain from the Silent Hill franchise, was inspired by an unlikely source: a background character in Bracveheart.

Silent Hill 2 director Masahiro Ito recemt;y took to Twitter to share that the "inspiration for the background of Pyramid Head from [Silent Hill 2] as the executioner. From a film Braveheart."

The inspiration for the background of Pyramid Head from SH2 as the executioner. From a film Braveheart. pic.twitter.com/B2GAbHAsuB

— 伊藤暢達/Masahiro Ito (@adsk4) October 13, 2022

Ito began designing Pyramid Head based on that Braveheart character, and he continued to refine the look by referencing other films and books where people put bags on their head and he "came up with the idea of an executioner of the old town."

Ito also quote-tweeted a post he shared in 2017 of some of the oil and acrylic paints he made during his time as an art student. The four he shared were from his 'Strange Head' series and were created between 1993 and 1996. The first image in the Tweet below is of note as it was another inspiration for Pyramid Head.

The design of Pyramid Head is based on the 1st one_Some of oil/acrylic paints in my art student days (1993 - 1996). “Strange head” series. pic.twitter.com/J1RWAS9vlS

— 伊藤暢達/Masahiro Ito (@adsk4) July 26, 2017

Pyramid Head first debuted in Silent Hill 2 and has appeared in many other Silent Hill games since. It has even made guest appearances in Super Bomberman R and Dead by Daylight.

This terrifying foe helped make Silent Hill 2 our choice for the scariest game of all time and Pyramid Head's reveal made it to #36 in our list of the most unforgettable video game moments.

Pyramid Head and Silent Hill have been quiet for some time, but rumors and reports have been circling that a comeback may be in order. Most recently, Silent Hill movie director Christophe Gans said that "multiple" games in the franchise are in development.

This tease joins an unannounced Silent Hill game called The Short Message getting rated in South Korea, leaked images of a project in the series, and a rumor that Bloober Team is working on a remake of Silent Hill 2.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Scientists have taught a collection of brain cells living in a dish how to play a version of the arcade game pong. The research could one day give doctors a ‘sandbox’ with which to test treatments for brain diseases.

For hundreds of years, the scientific community has been attempting to unravel the inner workings of the human brain. This hyper-complex organ contains around 86 billion specialized messenger cells - known as neurons - that control everything from how we mediate our vital bodily functions, to how we conjure and express complex thought.

Unlocking the secrets to its function would allow scientists to remedy countless ailments, and advance a range of related technologies.

To this end, some of the brightest boffins on Earth have created countless computer models of the brain with varying scales and levels of complexity. However, an international team of scientists is trying a different approach, by taking embryonic mouse brain cells and human brain cells created from stem cells and growing them on top of a microelectrode array.

This array is capable of tracking the behavior of the 800,000 cells, and of applying electric stimulation to prompt activity in them. In effect, DishBrain, as the team calls it, is a relatively simplistic living model of part of a living brain.

“In the past, models of the brain have been developed according to how computer scientists think the brain might work,” comments Dr. Brett Kagan, lead author of the new study and Chief Scientific Officer at Cortical Labs. “That is usually based on our current understanding of information technology, such as silicon computing. But in truth, we don’t really understand how the brain works.”

In a new study published in the journal Neuron, scientists took DishBrain and attempted to make the cells act in an intelligent, coordinated way to complete a task. More specifically, they wanted to see if they could get the myriad cells to act as one, and successfully play the tennis game, Pong.

The team used a series of electrodes to create their virtual pong court. They were able to tell the cells which side of the court the ball was on using electrical signals, and the frequency of these signals was used to indicate its direction, and how far away the ball was from passing through an invisible wall to score.

According to a press release from the Australian site Science in Public, feedback from the electrodes was also used to teach the model brain how to return the ball. More specifically, the activity of cells in two defined regions of the dish was gathered and used to move a virtual paddle up and down.

However, training the model brain to correctly move the paddle was challenging. Ordinarily, dopamine is released by the brain to reward a correct action, and this in turn encourages a subject to act in a specific way. With DishBrain, this was not an option.

Instead, the team turned to a scientific theory known as the ‘free energy principle’ which asserts that cells like neurons will do what they can to reduce the unpredictability in their environment.

The team implemented the theory by hitting the dish with an unpredictable electrical stimulus when the paddle failed to intercept the ball, after which the virtual ball would set off again on a random vector. Conversely, if the neurons were able to move the paddle to successfully deflect the ball, then a predictable electrical stimulus was applied to all of the cells at once, after which the game continued in a predictable way.

Since the cells were inclined to make their environment predictable, they worked to understand the game and prolong the pong rally.

“The beautiful and pioneering aspect of this work rests on equipping the neurons with sensations — the feedback — and crucially the ability to act on their world,” says Professor Karl Friston, a co-author of the new study from University College London. “Remarkably, the cultures learned how to make their world more predictable by acting upon it."

The team discovered that DishBrain’s ability to extend a rally improved significantly over the course of just five minutes. In other words, the cells were able to self-organize to complete a goal, using what the researchers defined as synthetic biological intelligence.

“The translational potential of this work is truly exciting: it means we don’t have to worry about creating ‘digital twins’ to test therapeutic interventions,” comments Professor Friston. “We now have, in principle, the ultimate biomimetic ‘sandbox’ in which to test the effects of drugs and genetic variants – a sandbox constituted by exactly the same computing (neuronal) elements found in your brain and mine.”

Moving forward, the researchers are planning to give DishBrain alcohol to see how it affects its performance at pong. One day, the authors of the study hope that the model could provide a useful alternative to animal testing, and allow physicians to gain new insights regarding degenerative diseases like dementia.

Anthony Wood is a freelance science writer for IGN

Image credit: Cortical Labs

Disney has shared the first poster for its next live-action remake, The Little Mermaid.

The new poster shows Halle Bailey's Ariel sitting on a rock on the ocean floor, looking to the world above. This is our best look so far at Ariel from head to, well, fin, as the teaser trailer from D23 refrained from showing very many shots of the character. You can take a look at the poster yourself below.

Ariel's pose in the poster nearly recreates a poster from the original and the stage adaptation of The Little Mermaid, where Ariel is sitting on a rock sticking out of the ocean, gazing out at the moon. Alongisde Bailey's Ariel, the movie stars Melissa McCarthy as Ursula, Javier Bardem as King Triton, Daveed Diggs as Sebastian, and Awkwafina as Scuttle.

Disney's The Little Mermaid is coming to theaters on May 26, 2023. Outside of the teaser trailer, the only other look we've had at the movie is an image posted to Bailey's Instagram of the movie filming off the Italian coast.

Fans are hoping The Little Mermaid turns out better than Disney's last live-action remake, Pinocchio, which we called "an exercise in mediocrity." For more on what's coming after The Little Mermaid, check out every upcoming Disney live-action remake.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN covering video game and entertainment news. He has over six years of experience in the gaming industry with bylines at IGN, Nintendo Wire, Switch Player Magazine, and Lifewire. Find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Netflix has finally announced the release date for its cheaper, ad-supported tier along with details on what exactly will be included with this low-priced subscription.

The streaming company has been working on an ad-supported tier for some time now and Netflix finally announced that the new "Basic with Ads" tier will be released on November 3 at 9 am PT.

The new tier will cost $6.99 a month and will be available in the US, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain, and UK.

The Basic with Ads tier will be limited to 720p/HD, the same as Netflix's Basic plans. The company also says users can expect an average of 4 to 5 minutes of ads per hour that will be 15 or 30 seconds in length. Ads will play before and during shows and films.

Netflix also revealed that some movies and TV shows won't be available due to licensing restrictions, though says it is working on this front. Furthermore, users will not be able to download titles.

The company has been touting a new ad-supported tier for months following disastrous financial results and shrinking subscription growth. Other streaming services like Peacock and Paramount+ already offer ad-supported tiers, and Disney Plus is also working on rolling out a cheaper, ad-supported plan.

Whether this cheaper offering entices users to Netflix remains to be seen as the company is doing everything it can to find growth again, from cracking down on password sharing, to focusing on core hits.

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

The shutting down of Google Stadia has claimed its first video game victim as multiplayer title Outcasters will also cease to exist when the cloud gaming service disappears in January.

As reported by Game Developer, Outcasters studio Splash Damage posted on Twitter (below) that, because the game was built exclusively for Stadia, it's not viable to port the game to another platform.

An update on Outcasters: pic.twitter.com/VdkZUcUv1z

— Outcasters (@playoutcasters) October 12, 2022

"It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that we do not have plans to bring Outcasters to other platforms at this time," said Splash Damage in a blog post. "Outcasters was designed and built exclusively for Stadia, with many of its systems heavily reliant on the platform, significantly increasing the complexity of the work required.

"We still firmly believe that cloud gaming has a bright future in our industry, providing easier access to games than ever before, and we are encouraged to see that other platforms still champion the cause."

Outcasters was only announced in July 2020 and was released in December that year. Due to Google shutting down its cloud gaming service on January 18, 2023, however, the game will have only been available for just over a year.

Google said that Stadia didn't gain the traction it expected and has begun refunding users who bought into the service as a result. While some companies including CD Projekt Red has been helping players transfer their game data off the dying service, Outcasters is the first example of a game that will go down with it.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.

Sony has announced that its once PlayStation exclusive Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales is coming to PC on November 18.

Revealed in a PlayStation Blog post, Miles Morales on PC will support Nvidia's latest DLSS 3 technology to ensure the highest of frame rates (though it's exclusive to RTX 40-series graphics cards), but DLSS 2, DLAA, and Nvidia Reflex will also be supported.

The game's overall system requirements were also shared (below), with PlayStation confirming that it will feature two levels of ray tracing. Miles Morales also adds new ray-traced shadows for outdoor light, enabling realistic shadows with natural gradients depending on if it's cast by the sun or moon.

The game is fully optimised for ultra-wide gaming and supports 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios (alongside 48:9 for a triple monitor setup). Cinematics will only be available up to 32:9, however, the same as the original Spider-Man's PC version.

"Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PC features many enhancements, customizable settings and support for a broad range of hardware configurations, all the way from high-end PCs to portable PC gaming devices," said community manager of Nixxess Software, Julian Huijbregts, in the blog post.

"In the graphics menu, you’ll find many customizable features, presets, and quality levels to choose from. These include texture quality and filtering, level of detail, crowd and traffic density, field of view, windowed, full screen and exclusive full screen rendering modes, and many other options."

The game can now be pre-purchased on Steam and the Epic Games Store, and PlayStation announced that doing so will give players early access to the T.R.A.C.K. and Into the Spider-Verse suits, alongside the Gravity Well gadget and three skill points.

The original Spider-Man was released on PC in August and became PlayStation Studios' second biggest launch on the platform after God of War. Its appearance on PC has also led to a ton of wacky mods, including a playable Stan Lee and a currently unreleased, potentially vomit-inducing first-person mode.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.