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.

The former Nintendo of America QA worker who alleged she was fired for asking about unionisation has reached a settlement with the company and staffing agency Aston Carter.

As reported by Polygon, Aston Carter will pay QA worker Mackenzie Clifton $25,910 in back pay, damages, and interest, and will also take liability for the complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

Nintendo must also email each of its QA workers with an outline of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act and must also post the notice in their offices for 60 consecutive days.

Clifton filed the complaint with the NLRB in April after she was fired for disclosing confidential information, though she claimed it was instead because she asked Nintendo of America for its views on the ongoing unionisation movement in the video game industry, sparked by Activision Blizzard's Raven Software. She later said she was rebuked for asking a "downer question" and was fired one month later.

An IGN report published in May found growing discontentment within Nintendo of America as many departments including QA employ mostly contractors who have limited benefits and privileges.

One former work told IGN that, while she loved working at Nintendo, "we were just being so exploited".

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

A new update for Elden Ring has finally separated damage scaling for PvE and PvP. But, in a more interesting tease, the data within the patch appears to hint towards new locations and ray tracing technology.

As revealed in the v1.07 patch notes for Elden Ring, damage scaling for PvE and PvP has been separated, which will allow for different weapons and skills to be balanced for each mode individually. “In the future, this feature may be used to balance weapons, Art, Spell, and Incantation in invading/PvP mode,” publisher Bandai Namco said in a blog post. “Balance adjustments made within this feature will not impact single-player and cooperative play.”

The first PvP-only changes have already been made, including increased stamina attack power for all attacks against guarded foes (except for long-ranged weapons), and a game-wide reduction in the power of Ashes of War. Several incantations have also been nerfed for PvP, including Dragonfire, Rotten Breath, and Agheel’s Flame.

It’s in the update’s data, though, where the most interesting details lie. Data miner Lance McDonald noted on Twitter that “menu strings related to ray tracing features” have been added, suggesting that the lighting and reflections tech may be headed to Elden Ring in a future update.

The IDs are m20 and m45. Notably, IDs can imply what kind of area a map is. m30 maps are side dungeons, m60 is the overworld, and the "main" areas are currently m10 through m19, which means m20 could be a Legacy Dungeon. m45 is interesting because there are no maps in that range. https://t.co/uaN2nXC4eD pic.twitter.com/Wdv2ybW9BA

— Zullie (@ZullieTheWitch) October 13, 2022

Both McDonald and FromSoft content creator ZullieTheWitch have also noted that the data includes references to two new maps that currently do not exist in Elden Ring’s data. Zulli says that their IDs are m20 and m45, and also highlights that the main areas of the game are found on maps m10 to m19, which does point to the newly found m20 potentially being the next “main” area of Elden Ring. “m20 could be Legacy Dungeon,” she said. Is DLC on the horizon?

For more Elden Ring, see how one player defeated Malenia using a level one character and a dance mat, as well as the news of an upcoming Elden Ring board game.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Features Editor.

Activision Blizzard has received another sexual harassment lawsuit that also alleges sexual battery, failure to prevent harassment, gender discrimination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

As reported by The Daily Mail, a plaintiff identified only as Jane Doe filed the lawsuit with the Los Angeles Superior Court that claimed "Activision Blizzard is a massive video game company with a massive sexual harassment problem".

Doe is seeking an undisclosed amount of compensation, punitive damages, and the removal of CEO Bobby Kotick, who was previously accused of knowing about but not reporting sexual harassment allegations at Activision Blizzard.

The lawsuit is against both Activision Blizzard itself - which is currently locked in a number of other lawsuits alleging sexual harassment - and former employee Miguel Vega, the once manager of Doe who was allegedly fired a month after she reported him to management.

Deo met Vega in 2009 or 2010 before she worked at Activision Blizzard and the pair formed a virtual friendship in which Doe sent "compromising photos" of herself, something she now regrets according to the lawsuit. This relationship ended in 2011, however, as Doe met her future husband.

The lawsuit states that Vega helped Doe get independent contractor work at Activision Blizzard in 2016 and she later started full time at the company in 2020. Vega allegedly groped and attempted to kiss Doe, telling her "one day you'll give in", and also belittled, insulted, and threatened to blackmail her with the compromising photos.

"He never missed an opportunity to make her feel small," the lawsuit states, adding that Doe reported the blackmail threats and that Vega was fired the next month. The lawsuit alleges this wasn't enough, however, claiming that Activision Blizzard ratified Vega's conduct by not taking more immediate and corrective action.

It's the latest in a long line of allegations against the company that began with a lawsuit filed by the state of California, accusing Activision Blizzard of fostering a "frat boy culture". While it is currently pending in Los Angeles Superior Court with an expected trial date in February 2023, the company recently settled another sexual harassment lawsuit with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for $18 million.

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