Overwatch Director Reveals Rejected “Cat in a Jetpack” Hero
Overwatch features a talking scientist gorilla, but apparently another suggested hero design was a step too far - a "cat in a jetpack".
In an entertaining interview with Gamespot, Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan spilled the beans on the rejected hero from the game's development:
"We had done a lot of concepting
There was this one hero that was a huge internal debate on the team because we just loved it so much but it didn't make it. It was this jetpack and it had this cat that laid in it, like a cat does.
"Then every once in a while it would paw at the controls. It was a cat in a jetpack. That was one of those moments that helped define Overwatch. We just went, 'Yeah that's probably too far.' But yes. We had a cat hero."
Stories for 14 More Transformers Films Already Written
It seems Transformers: Bumblebee isn't the only spin-off planned in the blockbuster action series - producer-director Michael Bay has said there are 14 more Transformers movie stories already written.
When asked by MTV if he could speak to any other spin-offs in the works, Bay revealed just how much more we could see - and seemingly marked himself as interested in directing at least one more film in the franchise:
"There are 14 stories written, and there's good stuff. I would like to do one of them, though."
Bay's made something of a habit of saying that each Transformers film will be his last - he said the same of the upcoming The Last Knight in February - and it seems he might have reconsidered his decision once again.
Dumbo: Michael Keaton, Tim Burton Could Reunite After 25 Years
Batman himself (or at least a Batman himself), Michael Keaton is in talks to star in Tim Burton's upcoming live-action Dumbo remake.
Variety reports Keaton is up for the main villain role in the film. The story centers around an ostracized baby circus elephant - Dumbo - with Keaton potentially playing the owner of the circus who exploits the elephant and his mother. The character acquires the circus from the ringmaster, played by Danny DeVito, who recently joined the film.
Diablo 3 and the Glorious Return of the Necromancer
“There’s a certain appeal for a lot of people in playing the anti-hero,” says Diablo III Lead VFX Artist Julian Love. “And that’s what the Necromancer represents, the darkest of the classes in that world, but one that is also doing good everywhere they go. There’s a kind of juxtaposition between good and evil, and from there a grey line where the Necromancer lives.” The Necromancer is a Diablo II icon, and now, five years after initial release and three years since the excellent Reaper of Souls expansion, it’s coming to Diablo III.
Why now? Why not. After all, Blizzard is still supporting Diablo III with new content and regular updates. Even so, a new character class is a big deal. It requires not only the creation of a new and deep subset of skill and items, but also game design that plays nicely with everything else already in the game. Years of wonderful, and inventive stuff. The Necromancer actually comes to us from the same creative and experimental side of the Diablo team that also brought us some of the crazier things in the game, like the set bonus that activates a high powered meteor shower spell every eight seconds for each and every type of elemental skill you use.
Opinion: Diversity Isn’t the Problem at Marvel
From a PR standpoint, Marvel didn't have a particularly good weekend. The company held a retailer summit last Friday to discuss their shifting publishing strategy and address concerns about slumping sales. These retailer summits are always interesting because, ostensibly, they are private events where Marvel's reps seem more willing to speak frankly about industry matters. However, ICv2 was there to cover the meetings for the public, which is how we came to hear about the controversial remarks made by Marvel's Senior Vice President David Gabriel.
Essentially Gabriel said that, according to retailers he talked to and sales data, Marvel's push towards diversity was the reason for the sales drop. "What we heard was that people didn't want any more diversity. They didn't want female characters out there. That's what we heard, whether we believe that or not. I don't know that that's really true, but that's what we saw in sales." Gabriel later elaborated on those comments in an interview with ICv2. There he said, "We saw the sales of any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up against. That was difficult for us because we had a lot of fresh, new, exciting ideas that we were trying to get out and nothing new really worked."
WWE Alum AJ Lee on Her “Crazy” Road to Wrestling
Like many past and present members of the WWE locker room, April “AJ” Mendez Brooks grew up loving wrestling and dreaming of becoming a WWE superstar herself. But for AJ, the possibility of achieving stardom in that world seemed especially unlikely, given her diminutive stature, and that in the post-“Attitude”, pre-“Divas revolution” era, the WWE’s female wrestlers were being given very little storyline time, with only a handful of deviations to the types of women on the roster.
However, not only did Mendez Brooks make it into the WWE, she became a breakout star under her WWE name, AJ Lee – in the process becoming the first woman to both have merchandise made for her or to be put on a WWE Pay-Per-View poster in several years, thank to her popularity. Along the way, she became a three time Divas champion, was included in prominent storylines with the likes of Daniel Bryan, Kane, Dolph Ziggler, and her future real life husband, CM Punk, and was named WWE RAW General Manager, among many other milestones.
Daniel Craig Reportedly Persuaded Back for Bond 25
He may have been far from eager for another go at playing 007 back when he was promoting SPECTRE, but Daniel Craig has reportedly been wooed back for James Bond 25.
New York Post's Page Six gossip column, citing multiple sources, claims Bond producer Barbara Broccoli has "'just about persuaded Daniel Craig to do one more Bond movie.'"
Broccoli also recently produced the off-Broadway production of Othello, which won Craig good notices for his turn as the villainous Iago.
Invincible Movie Announced
Robert Kirkman's long-running superhero comic book series Invincible is being turned into a movie.
Skybound announced today that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg will direct, write, and produce the film adaptation for Universal. Kirkman promises that Rogen and Goldberg are the perfect filmmakers for the project and the comic's "surprising, edgy, shocking, and oftentimes blood-soaked story couldn't be in more capable hands."
Invincible comic.
Kirkman went on to say he's "very confident this will be another superhero movie, in a long line of superhero movies that continues to prove that it's a viable, thrilling genre that will keep people coming back to the cinema for years to comes."
Google Reveals What Games, Consoles Teens Think Are Cool
The Legend of Zelda, Grand Theft Auto and Minecraft are among a handful of the most popular game franchises for teenagers, according to a new study.
It's all part of a Google guide that researched what teens — specifically, Generation Z, which includes people born between the mid-1990's and the early 2000's — think are cool. But those series aren't alone. When it comes to games, Call of Duty: Black Ops, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Pokemon also sit at the top for the youthful demographic. For the purposes of the study, Google classifies Gen Z as teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17.
Every Major Fast and the Furious Character
From Dominic Toretto's days racing on the streets of Los Angeles to flying a car through skyscrapers in Abu Dhabi to, shockingly, turning on the Fast Family in New York City, the Fast and Furious franchise has spanned eight films and many, many characters.
With The Fate of the Furious releasing on April 14, IGN has decided to live life a little more than a quarter mile at a time and reflect on every major character from the last seven films — and the few we know will appear in the upcoming eighth film.
Check out the gallery below to see every major hero, villain, hero-turned-villain, villain-turned-hero, and (nearly) every key side character who has helped, or try to hurt, the Toretto crew along the way. (So yes, some are not quite as major as the core Fast Family.) Spoilers obviously follow for the first seven movies...