Month: February 2019

Disney has released a new trailer for its upcoming live-action Aladdin. It’s a fine trailer, complete with colourful city shots and dark, ominous tones, but the real meat of the matter is at the end.

Will Smith’s CG version of the Genie is revealed, and, well, have a look for yourself in the video embed above.

I have questions. Why does Will Smith’s Genie look like a blue Shrek? Also why has the Genie been hitting the gym? Will Smith also plays a live-action version of the Genie, and you can see an image of him here.

Smith previously spoke to EW about the “terrifying” job of playing the Genie. As you may remember, the late Robin Williams portrayed the Genie in the animated classic, and he leaves very big shoes to fill.

“Robin didn’t leave a lot of meat on the bone with the character,” Smith said. “[But] I started to feel confident that I could deliver something that was an homage to Robin Williams but was musically different. Just the flavor of the character would be different enough and unique enough that it would be in a different lane, versus trying to compete.”

Disney describes the movie as a “thrilling and vibrant” take on Disney’s classic animated film. It’s directed by Guy Ritchie, and the Sherlock Holmes director’s trademark “fast-paced, visceral action” is said to infuse his take on Aladdin.

Mena Massoud plays Aladdin, while Naomi Scott portrays Jasmine. Marwan Kenzari plays Jafar and Navid Negahban plays the Sultan. Alan Menken, who worked on the music for the original Aladdin, is back again and contributing “recordings of the original songs” from the first film. In addition to new versions of the classics, Menken and award-winning songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul wrote two new tunes for the film.

The new Aladdin hits theatres this May. The studio that made Sharknado, Transmorphers, and Abraham Lincoln Vs. Zombies is making its own Aladdin.

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While no official title for the new Terminator movie directed by Deadpool’s Tim Miller has been announced, producer James Cameron has now revealed the working title for it. It’s being made with the tentative title “Terminator: Dark Fate,” Cameron told Yahoo!

“That’s our working title right now,” he explained.

Cameron is an executive producer on Dark Fate, or whatever it ends up being called. The movie reportedly scrubs sequels Rise of the Machines, Salvation, and Genisys from the timeline, in essence resetting the story to 1991’s Judgment Day. Linda Hamilton returns to play a new version of Sarah Connor in the new film, though specifics about the story are under wraps for now.

Cameron said on Jimmy Fallon’s late night TV show that Connor will “kick some serious ass” in the film. Dark Fate, or whatever it ends up being called, comes to theatres November 2019.

Cameron’s latest movie, Alita: Battle Angel, which he produced, hits theatres on February 14. He’s also working on all of the Avatar sequels, the first of which arrives in 2020.

After years of development and multiple delays, Microsoft’s next big exclusive, Crackdown 3, launches this week–and you can play it for only $1 if you meet a few requirements.

As a first-party game, Crackdown 3 is free for Xbox Game Pass subscribers. And right now, Microsoft is offering a one-month Xbox Game Pass trial for only $1. The catch is that you need to be a new subscriber to enjoy the savings.

Xbox Game Pass already has “millions” of subscribers, but if you’re not among them, right now seems to be a good time to jump in. You can sign up for Xbox Game Pass on the Xbox website or through your console.

Crackdown 3 is coming to Xbox One and PC, but Xbox Game Pass is only on Xbox One right now. It could come to PC and other platforms down the road, but no announcements have been made as of it. Crackdown 3 launches on February 15.

Crackdown 3 is not the only game coming to Xbox Game Pass in February; you can see a full rundown of February’s additions below.

For $10/month, Xbox Game Pass subscribers get access to a growing library of free games to download and play for as long as their membership stays active. There are more than 100 Xbox One and backwards-compatible Xbox 360 titles in the catalog, including Halo 5, Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Sea of Thieves, PUBG, Mortal Kombat X, and many more.

February Game Pass Games

• Shadow of the Tomb Raider – February 7
• The Walking Dead: The Complete First Season – February 7
• Pumped BMX Pro – February 7
• De Blob – February 14
• Crackdown 3 – February 15
• Batman: Return to Arkham – February 21

Throughout its nine seasons, The Walking Dead has been known just as much for its charismatic and over-the-top villains as it has for the zombie apocalypse it’s set in. With the newest big bad, though, those two things are blended together to create something pretty terrifying.

The Whisperers is a group within The Walking Dead that survives by wearing skin suits made from walkers and blending in with the undead as they roam what’s left of the country. It’s a storyline and group of characters pulled right from the pages of the Walking Dead comics and, as GameSpot learned during a visit to the AMC show’s set, adapting it for TV was no easy task.

It was a hot day in September when I headed outside of Atlanta, where the series films, to get my first look at the Whisperers. Along with other members of the press, we wandered through a big open field in the sweltering heat, walking by groups of extras and actors wearing zombie masks, rather than the typical makeup and prosthetics you see on the series.

As executive producer and visual effects Greg Nicotero explained to the press, though, these new masks are, in some ways, even more detailed than the makeup because the way the Whisperers are presented in the comics simply wouldn’t work on TV. “It’s tricky because the way they were drawn in the comic books, they were trying to emulate that sort of sagging skin, so they all looked melted,” he said. “And I was like, ‘I don’t want them to look melted and I don’t want it to look like Leatherface either.'”

The key, it turned out, was a bit of a cheat. “The trick is, you got to preserve kind of the bone structure of the skull, even though theoretically the bone structure wouldn’t be there because they’re flaying the skin off,” he continued. “But when you look at the masks, you can see that we maintained that kind of deep eye sockets, because I wanted the brow to stick out enough to put a shadow over the eyes, so when you look at the faces, everything’s in shadow so you get nothing there. I wanted to over-texture everything, so all the sculptures are really over-textured and really shriveled-looking and a lot of rot and decay.”

And, in practice, it’s hard to argue with Nicotero’s vision. As I sat on set and heard a member of the crew shout, “3…2…1…Whisperers!,” before calling action, it was disturbing to watch the new foes shuffle into frame on the monitors set up for viewing. As they whispered at each other in a guttural tone reminiscent of the show’s signature zombie moaning, it became difficult to distinguish those in skinsuits from the actual walkers.

And that difficulty, paired with the kind of depraved mind that would sew together pieces of rotting skin into a full-body suit are what makes this group so horrifying. “How many recent movies have had the masked killer that that’s what scares people is you can’t bargain with them because they’re soulless, they’re human-less?” Nicotero wonders. “And now we have a group of people that they’re wearing dead fucking skins, you know?” Nicotero says.

The Walking Dead airs Sundays on AMC.

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