Cowboy Bebop Is Getting a Live-Action TV Series
A live-action television adaptation of Cowboy Bebop is in development.
Deadline reports the beloved '90s anime, which follows a group of spacefaring bounty hunters, is in the works at Tomorrow Studios, a join venture between ITV Studios and television producer Marty Adelstein (Prison Break: Resurrection).
Tomorrow Studios is partnering with the Japanese animation studio behind the original anime, Sunrise, as well as Midnight Radio, who'll both executive produce the remake. Christopher Yost, the screenwriter behind both Thor: The Dark World and Thor: Ragnarok, will pen the live-action series. No release date for the remake has been set yet.
Pokemon Gold and Silver Coming to 3DS Virtual Console
The original Game Boy Color versions of Pokemon Gold and Pokemon Silver will arrive on the Nintendo 3DS eShop as Virtual Console titles on September 22.
The 2nd generation Pokemon games will be compatible with Pokemon Bank (meaning captured Pokemon can be transferred into later games), and will be compatible with the 3DS' wireless communication features, allowing for trades and battles that used to be link cable-only with other Virtual Console Gold and Silver owners.
The games will also include the Time Capsule feature, allowing trading 'back in time' from Gold and Silver to the Virtual Console versions of Pokemon Blue, Red and Yellow.
To be clear, these new releases are the original versions of Gold and Silver, not the HeartGold and SoulSilver remakes for Nintendo DS.
Transformers: The Last Knight Optimus Prime Figure Revealed
Hasbro has unveiled one of its upcoming San Diego Comic-Con 2017 exclusives, a tie-in into this summer's Transformers: The Last Knight.
IGN can exclusively debut the Voyager Class Optimus Prime figure, which will be available for purchase exclusively at SDCC 2017 this July for $49.99. Check out the figure below:
The Optimus Prime figure is based on both Optimus' robot mode and Western Star truck mode featured in the upcoming Michael Bay-directed Transformers film. Additionally, the figure comes with a piece of actual truck tire used in The Last Knight with a certificate of authenticity from Western Star.
The figure will be available at booth #3329 on the SDCC show floor. After the convention, a limited supply of the figure will also be available on Hasbro's Toy Shop.
Scalebound Director Addresses Cancellation, Future Plans
Scalebound director Hideki Kamiya has offered an apology to fans for the game’s recent cancellation, plus offered a few hints about what he’d like to tackle next.
“For the fans, an apology is really all that I can offer. I’m terribly sorry,” Kamiya told IGN recently at PlatinumGames' headquarters in Osaka. “That goes for the fans, but it goes for the team members who worked on the game as well. The staff here at Platinum, the creative team at Microsoft, there were a lot of people who worked on this game and tried to make it special. I feel a lot of weight for not being able to have had something come from their efforts.”
How Interplay Founder Helped Jump-Start Blizzard
Brian Fargo, the founder of Interplay and inXile Entertainment, was instrumental in the creation of Silicon & Synapse, which ultimately became Blizzard Entertainment, and has shared the story behind its inception.
On that latest episode of our monthly interview show IGN Unfiltered, Fargo first explained how he knew the guys who would go on to found Blizzard—Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce, and Allen Adham—saying that at the time, because there was no internet, they would all trade games with each other.
Then sometime later, Adham went into the military, and upon his return, he saw what Fargo was doing with Interplay and wanted to get into the business as well. "He got back and he said, 'I want to do what you're doing. That looks great.' And I said, 'Well, let me help you.' And so we gave them their first contracts to get them launched into the business," Fargo said.
This Anime About Millennials in a Small Town Is Too Relatable
The farming RPG Stardew Valley and slice-of-life anime Flying Witch are beautiful refuges from the hustle of everyday life. Their pleasant themes offer a magical perspective on rural living. But as nice as those are, animation studio P.A. Works’ (Shirobako, The Eccentric Family) newest anime, Sakura Quest, has a theme that I find to be generally more relatable and less dreamy.
Sakura Quest’s protagonist Yoshino Koharu puts it perfectly:
“I don’t care about my golden years, I want to be blessed now!”
Like Yoshino, I was desperate to get out of the midwest. I promptly moved out of old Oklahoma the morning after I received my college diploma; I needed to be in the thriving city with all its shining opportunities. Sakura Quest tackles this exact mindset from several different perspectives to challenge the youthful ambition of escaping small town life. It’s humbling, funny, and makes me wish I would have appreciated my time living not too far from cows a little more. Its differences from Stardew Valley and Flying Witch make it a wonderful follow-up to their idealistic rural towns.
Life After Scalebound and The Future of PlatinumGames
This month's IGN First is a bit different than usual. Rather than highlighting a single game -- we'll get back to that next month -- we're highlighting the Japanese game industry as a whole. We visited some of the biggest studios in Japan to focus on their games and creative processes. Check back all month for interviews, gameplay reveals, and more!
On a beautiful, sunny spring morning, PlatinumGames studio lead Atsushi Inaba wanders the BitSummit show floor in Kyoto, Japan. Originally a small event for Japanese indie game developers, BitSummit has in its fifth year become a much larger show, with developers from around the globe demoing their games to the curious public. Despite the crowds, developers of Inaba’s experience and tenure mill about freely. They walk the floor, checking out games alongside thousands of gamers from all walks of life.
Westworld Funko Pops Now Available
Several new Funko Pops featuring some of Westworld's main characters are now available on HBO's online store.
The Funko Pops each cost $9.99/£12.99 and are 3.75 inches in size. You can also purchase all seven Funko Pops for $62.94/£48.85. The seven different figurines that are available are: The Man in Black, Dolores Abernathy, Teddy, Dr. Robert Ford, Young Dr. Ford, Maeve, and Bernard Lowe.
Check out an image gallery of the whole set below:
Westworld: Season 2 will premiere in 2018. While you wait for the show's return, read IGN's review of the first season, which we dubbed "one of 2016's best new series."
Pennywise Actor Made Child Actors Cry on the Set of It
The It reboot's new Pennywise, Bill Skarsgard did a great job of traumatizing child actors on the set of It.
Speaking with his borhter, Alexander for Interview Magazine, Skarsgard revealed he "wasn't very friendly or goofy" during filming and tried his best to make Pennywise as creepy and weird as possible when he was in full makeup.
During the filming of one particular scene, Skarsgard made several child extras cry simply by looking at them. While some "were really intrigued" by Skarsgard's makeup and clown outfit, others were shaking. "I am completely in character," said Skarsgard. "So some of these kids got terrified and started to cry in the middle of the take, and then I realized, 'Holy s**t. What am I doing? What is this? This is horrible.'"
Suicide Squad 2 Should Begin Shooting Next Year
Suicide Squad 2 should begin shooting sometime in 2018.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Joel Kinnaman, who plays Rick Flag in the DC film, confirmed Warner Bros. is currently working on the script for the sequel. "As far as I know they're writing the script and I think the plan is to shoot it sometime in 2018, but that could change," said Kinnaman. "I think I'll definitely come back for it."
As for who Kinnaman wants to direct Suicide Squad 2, he'd "love for David Ayer" to return. But if that isn't on the cards, Kinnaman wants a director, "who is great with character and that's able to ground the story and maybe put these characters in a more normal situation."