Disney is moving forward with a sequel to Aladdin, the reboot that made more than $1 billion at the box office in 2019. According to Variety, the producers spent six months try to find a direction of the sequel, and now the movie is in the early stages of development.
Disney is reportedly replacing the 2019 movie’s writers, John August and Guy Ritchie, and bringing in new writers John Gatins (Flight) and Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton) for the sequel, according to the report. The original movie’s producers, Dan Lin and Jonathan Eirich, are reportedly set to return.
The report goes on to say that it’s unclear if director Guy Ritchie will return as well. The film studio also hopes to bring back Will Smith, Mena Massoud, and Naomi Scott, but the report says they won’t receive official offers until the script is finished.
Also of note, Variety reports that Aladdin 2, or whatever it’s called, will play in theatres as opposed to premiering as a Disney+ film. That’s expected, given the 2019 Aladdin made more than $1 billion at the box office.
The original Aladdin movie had two sequels–Return of Jafar and King of Thieves–but they were released on direct-to-video. Sources told Variety that the sequel to the live-action Aladdin will not follow the plots of those earlier sequels.
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On last week’s call with investors, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon re-emphasized his commitment to maintaining WWE’s PG rating. When asked if AEW would encourage WWE’s creative team to create edgier, more explicit content, McMahon said the following:
“AEW has not changed [WWE’s] content at all because it’s all about our characters, the storylines, and resolutions. We don’t need more edgy content, as you call it. We’re one of the few programs out there that really is PG.”
Shayna Baszler bit Becky Lynch on the neck and then posed with blood dripping out of her mouth on the February 10 episode of Raw. WWE is in the business of working a paying audience; it takes nerve and gall to work the stockholders.
The big bite occurred on the heels of a Raw Women’s Championship match between Becky Lynch and challenger Asuka. Lynch retained the title via pinfall, and it was during her post-match celebration that Baszler entered the ring and struck Lynch from behind. She then locked her opponent into a Kirifuda Clutch, before throwing Lynch’s limp body to the mat, face first.
That’s gonna leave a mark…
This was Baszler’s debut on Raw after years of dominating NXT. Had the segment ended there, it would have been perfect. In less than a minute, WWE had established everything the audience needed to know about this new feud between Lynch and Baszler. In one corner was the dominant champion, who held the title against all comers and handed Ronda Rousey her first loss. In the other corner was a thick-shouldered, legitimate shoot fighter, who trained with Rousey and fought in the UFC.
But the segment did not end there. Instead, Shayna Baszler knelt down and took a healthy chomp out of the back of Becky Lynch’s neck. Blood flowed out of Baszler’s mouth. Lynch, who had been lying on the mat lifeless, began hollering at the top of her lungs. And as she was taken out of the arena by a medic team, the camera captured dried blood clumped in Lynch’s hair.
Afterwards, Lynch hijacked an ambulance and drove herself to the hospital. She returned later in the show, bandaged up and spoiling for a fight. Baszler didn’t oblige, which means that likely, this angle will become a cat-and-mouse game for the next several weeks, where each woman will try and one-up the other. A Becky Lynch appearance on the February 12 episode of NXT seems imminent.
The segment drew a crowd reaction, no doubt about that. But WWE will struggle to top this segment for the next two months. It’s too much, too soon.
Baszler vs. Lynch
Let’s assume that both the bite and the blood were kayfabe (in the unlikely scenario that the bite was legit, this segment was beyond the pale). Even so–even as a scripted storytelling device–the bite is a freak show stunt. It reduces Baszler, who is a legitimate, trained fighter, to the level of a feral animal.
Fleshing out who she is, and why we should care, is going to be an uphill battle moving forward. The WWE creative team now has to convince the casual fan that Baszler is someone with value beyond “the one who bites people;” commentator Jerry Lawler got the ball rolling by calling her a “vampire.” Fortunately, Baszler is talented enough to dig herself out of this narrative hole, but why put her in the hole to begin with?
It would have been easy to make her unhinged and dangerous without stooping to this level. The bite was so extreme, so out of place, that it became impossible to suspend disbelief. Baszler might as well have taken out a knife and shanked Lynch. Because at that point, the wrestlers are no longer simulating athletic competition. They’re performing bad theater.
Conversely, imagine if Baszler mounted Lynch and continued to ground-and-pound her. Imagine if at the end of the segment, the blood dripped off of Baszler’s fists instead of her mouth. Wouldn’t that be terrifying?
In the context of a wrestling angle, biting is logical if the biter feels cornered or trapped–if the person’s other limbs are, for whatever reason, unavailable. Chomping down should be the last, desperate resort.
King Corbin takes a bite out of crime
Case in point: When Roman Reigns and the Usos chained Baron Corbin to the ring post on the January 31 episode of Smackdown, Corbin attempted to bite his opponents as a way of escaping because his hands were being yoked together. That made sense. What didn’t make sense, and what came across as ridiculous, was Shayna kneeling down to bite an unconscious opponent, who was lying in the prone position.
Yes, it was shocking, and it drew a social media response. But that’s a short-term reward that numbs the audience’s sensibilities. The bite would have made a lot more sense if it took place two weeks before Wrestlemania. The storyline needs to build to an emotional point where such an act would be a necessary escalation.
Instead, we’re 50 days away from Wrestlemania. What’s the followup act to this? Does Baszler continue to bite people? Will Lynch bite Baszler back? Never underestimate WWE’s ability to redefine bad taste. This is not the bottom.
Lynch vs. Baszler has the potential to be great–even better than the Charlotte Flair vs. Rhea Ripley showdown that’s also heating up. But often, the difference between a solid match and a classic match comes down to the context and history of its competitors and the lead-up to the fight. WWE hot-shotted this storyline with a momentum it cannot maintain. It does Baszler, and the hard work it took her to get to this point, a pointed disservice.
The so-called “Nintendo Play Station” console, which was a fable system and the subject of video game lore, is now available to buy on an auction site. The website Heritage Auctions has listed the Nintendo PlayStation console, and this is said to be the first time one of the units has been available at a public auction. Only 200 of these were ever made, and some or all of the other units were reportedly destroyed, but not this one.
The folks at Heritage Auctions say the console operates normally, and they played a few rounds of Mortal Kombat on it as a test. It’s now up for auction, and the current highest bid is 13,000. You can bid in increments of $500, and also bear in mind there is a 20 percent “buyer’s premium” attached, so $13,500 becomes $15,600, and so on.
“By far, this is arguably one of the most notorious, mysterious, and controversial artifacts of the video game industry,” reads the auction description. “This prototype has been around the world and back again, admired and appreciated by video game enthusiasts from all over. Even though this is the closing of this portion of its narrative, it will continue to remain a pivotal piece of video game history no matter where it ends up.”
The Nintendo PlayStation was publicly unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in 1991, but Nintendo backed out of the arrangement with Sony and, at that very same event, announced it would be entering into a partnership with Philips, which would result in the infamous Philips CD-i (and its notorious Zelda titles). The 200 existing prototypes for the Nintendo PlayStation were said to be destroyed.
Infinity Ward packed a lot into the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Season 2 update, and this includes a new dismemberment animation that is incredibly brutal and disgusting.
You can see in the video below that players killed by killstreaks can now have their heads blown clear off. Have a look at the video below to see this in action, but fair warning: it’s gross.
If you don’t want to see this new animation, or the game’s other gory ones, you can toggle off dismemberment and gore effects from the Options menu. Bear in mind, however, that dismemberment only happens in the campaign mode, but gore effects are in all modes.
Modern Warfare’s new Season 2 update adds a heap of new content, including a new version of the fan-favorite Modern Warfare 2 map, Rust. It’s available in a 24/7 playlist called “I Have Rust Issues.” For more, check out the full patch notes.
The Hollywood Reporter says the show will consist of 10 half-hour episodes and will be set in present day Minnesota. It’s not clear if this will be a miniseries or if it will potentially go on for future seasons. The story follows 12-year-old Evan (Brady Noon), who was recently cut from the now highly competitive Ducks. Evan and his mom (Lauren Graham) decide to start their own team of underdogs to take them on.
The Mighty Ducks series was first rumored in January 2018. The show will reportedly begin production in Canada this month for a release on Disney+ later this year. The writer of the three Ducks films, Steve Brill, co-created and will executive produce the series. Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldsmith, who both served as showrunners for The King of Queens, co-created the Mighty Ducks series and will serve as showrunners. Black-ish director James Griffiths will direct for the series.
Noon is best known as one of the leads of Good Boys while Graham was a star on Gilmore Girls and Parenthood. Graham will also be credited as an executive producer on the Mighty Ducks series.
The three Mighty Ducks films were never blockbusters at the box office, but they’ve certainly had a lasting appeal. The first Mighty Ducks movie was more popular in video rentals in 1993 than it was at the box office in 1992, according to Esquire. Popularity grew when Disney founded the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim NHL team shortly after the film’s release, which Esquire reports had the most first-year wins for any NHL team in history and was responsible for 80% of all NHL merchandise that season.
A Mighty Ducks animated series aired around the time of the third film’s release, featuring anthropomorphic ducks playing hockey. The show only lasted from September 1996 to January 1997, and the third film made less than half of the first movie at the box office.
There’s nothing quite like Sonic the Hedgehog. Not only is he a beloved pop culture icon and the star of some of the most popular video games of all time, he’s also the central character of a vast, rich mythology populated by all kinds of supporting characters. Some of Sonic’s pals are just as well known as he is: Miles “Tails” Prower, the friendly flying fox; Dr. Robotnik, with his huge mustache and dastardly schemes; Knuckles the Echidna, who was basically a universal cheat code for every Sega Genesis Sonic game with his super-cool flip-top game cartridge.
Chances are those names are pretty familiar to you–and, sure, Knuckles may have already pinged your radar as being a little weird, given the way he could inexplicably glide and scale walls for no discernible reason. But when looking at the larger picture of the Sonic Universe, it wasn’t that strange, right? After all, Tails could fly, Sonic could rev up. Video game characters sometimes just have weird, specific abilities, right? But it turns out flying foxes and gliding echidnas were just the tip of the strange Sonic character iceberg–and boy howdy, what an iceberg it is.
We sent ourselves on a surrealistic spiral through the far reaches of Sonic’s sprawling, mega-dense lore to find some of the weirdest characters the various branches of the franchise have to offer, from ninja-detective chameleons to regular, normal humans Sonic somehow just gets to pal around with between the various TV shows, games, and comics. Who could have guessed that the fight between a super-fast blue hedgehog and an evil robotics-obsessed scientist could be so complicated?
With any luck, we’ll see at least some of this craziness unleashed upon the big screen as the live-action Sonic The Hedgehog movie speeds towards theaters. Though right now, the only confirmed character (that isn’t just a regular human) is Sonic himself, there’s always the chance for some surprises, right? And, who knows, maybe the live-action Sonic universe will spin-off into its own mega-involved lore sometime down the line? We certainly hope it will.
Fortnite is one of the biggest games on the planet, and as a free-to-play game, it makes money from the sale of microtransactions. Unlike other popular free-to-play titles, however, the game does not have loot boxes.
Developer Epic Games stands against loot boxes as a monetization practice. CEO Tim Sweeney said during the D.I.C.E. 2020 Summit in Las Vegas that loot boxes share the same characteristics as gambling, and they have no place in games.
“We have to ask ourselves, as an industry, what we want to be when we grow up?” he said to an audience of some of the biggest names in gaming, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “Do we want to be like Las Vegas, with slot machines … or do we want to be widely respected as creators of products that customers can trust? I think we will see more and more publishers move away from loot boxes.”
He added: “We should be very reticent of creating an experience where the outcome can be influenced by spending money. Loot boxes play on all the mechanics of gambling except for the ability to get more money out in the end.”
Fortnite’s microtransactions come in the form of cosmetics that people can buy to outfit their characters in unique and personalized ways. The content that Epic sells for the game does not impact gameplay.
EA’s Star Wars: Battlefront II generated a lot of buzz for its implemention of loot boxes. In its pre-launch state, the game allowed players to spend money on loot boxes that could contain items that affect gameplay. Players voiced their concerns about this, and EA removed these loot boxes–and all of the game’s microtransactions–for the game’s official launch. Microtransactions later returned to the game.
Also during his talk, Sweeney spoke about how he hopes to see more cross-play games in the future. The executive said cross-play is good for business, as he found that Fortnite players who play together spend more time in the game and buy more microtransactions.
“What we all really want and need to accept is equal access to all customers and give up our attempts to create our own private wall guard or private monopoly,” Sweeney said. “In Fortnite, the player who spends with friends plays for twice as long and spends more money. Cross-platform is the future and we all have to do our part.”
Keighley explained that he made the decision to step away from producing the show following The Game Awards in December. That decision seems to primarily have been made due to what E3 Coliseum could (and couldn’t) deliver this year:
“I’ve been to all 25 E3s so I know the show pretty well”, Keighley wrote. “As I looked at the information that was available to me about this year’s show, and based on my conversations with The ESA, I just didn’t feel like we could do a Coliseum that would really deliver to the fans.”
Keighley didn’t specify exactly what the show couldn’t deliver, but it’s likely that Sony’s lack of involvement in E3 this year, as well as other developers’ competing events would form a major part of that difficulty.
When asked if companies not taking part in the show were a primary motivation for stepping away, Keighley explained: “The lack of unity was a contributing factor, but there were a lot of things that played into my decision.”
This isn’t necessarily Keighley’s final E3, however. While it’s clear that this year’s show doesn’t work for what he wants, he would consider a return in future: “I’m open to it, sure. This is just a decision related to E3 2020.”
Keighley spoke on Twitter earlier today about how E3 should become a more digital and globally focused event, moving away from the traditional showfloor experience, which raises questions about his other main conference show, Opening Night Live at Gamescom. However, it seems that show will continue as expected:
“Every show is different. We had a ton of fun producing Opening Night Live at gamescom and have a multi-year deal with them to continue that franchise”, he explained. “That show works really well at gamescom because three aren’t a ton of competing press conferences. I’m not sure the same model would work at E3. You have to find the right programming for each event and audience.”
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive Editor of News, and he is also publicly announcing that he won’t be hosting E3 Coliseum this year, in case you were wondering. Follow him on Twitter.
Star Wars: The Rise of Kylo Ren by writer Charles Soule and artist Will Sliney is a comic mini-series showing how once-promising Jedi Ben Solo fell to the Dark Side and became Kylo Ren. The third issue reveals a pivotal step in that journey: the first time Ben killed a Jedi. However, it doesn’t happen like you’d think.
Warning: full spoilers ahead!
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The first two issues of the series reveal that certain events only hinted at in the movies actually unfolded in quite a different manner. For one, Ben didn’t destroy the Jedi temple after his confrontation with Luke Skywalker. A strange, booming voice bellowed from the sky and Force-lightning struck the school and made it explode. Could it have been the Emperor? After that, Ben fled to his mentor Snoke, who greeted him with an uncharacteristically warm and fatherly hug. Snoke instructed Ben to seek out and join the Knights of Ren, but in order for him to join, the leader, named Ren, told Ben that he must kill someone and that it needed to be a good death.
In an attempt to prove himself worthy, Ben tells Ren of his first kill. He explains how three Jedi students who were off-planet at the time of the explosion — Voe, Hennix, and Tai — tracked him down and confronted him. They were his classmates in Luke’s Jedi school since they were kids. The story shows how there may have been certain tensions between Ben and the other three, but ultimately they were friends with one another. When the three Jedi catch up to Ben, they try to capture him and engage him in a three-on-one lightsaber battle.
Ben is able to use his Force-jumping skills to create some distance, knowing that only Voe has the strength to follow him. Landing atop a precipice, Ben waits for Voe to reach him and then Force-pushes her off the cliff. He immediately regrets his decision and tries to save her with the Force, but Hennix had climbed up the cliffside to surprise him from behind. Hennix throws his lightsaber at Ben, and Ben reacts by blocking the saber and sending it right back at Hennix, but Hennix isn’t ready for the counter and is killed by his own lightsaber. Voe continues to fall but is caught at the last second by Vai. Ben ends the conflict by Force-tossing Voe and Vai into the nearby ancient temple and using the Force to cause a cave-in, sealing them inside.
After recalling this story, Ren tells Ben that the way he killed Vennis wasn’t a good death because he didn’t want it to happen. Regardless, Ren lets Ben join in hopes that he will get the chance to truly prove himself. Ben even gets a new all-black outfit resembling something his father Han Solo might wear, complete with a blaster strapped to the side of his leg.
While the small bits of information we learn in the movies make it sound like Ben personally burnt down the temple and murdered Luke’s other students, the real story is quite different. Ben is incredibly conflicted about having to fight his fellow classmates. He tried to save one of them during their battle, and the one he did kill was on accident. The story shows how Ben was never good at handling his famous lineage and that he never learned to share his feelings, preferring to hide them away in an unhealthy manner.
Ben didn’t feel like he fit in at Luke’s Jedi academy, but that doesn’t automatically make him an evil murderer. It more feels like Ben was never cut out to be a Jedi, despite how gifted he was in the Force, but instead of dealing with his inner turmoil, he let it fester, and that made him an easy target for Snoke/Palpatine. This story shows how they took a misunderstood Jedi strong in the Force and manipulated him into falling to the Dark Side by framing him for murder and making it seem like his only option was to join a gang of Dark Side worshipers.
But despite the conflict raging within Ben, the two surviving Jedi have made up their minds about what to do with him. When Voe and Vai escape the ruins and see that Ben killed Vennix, they take that as a clear sign that he is truly lost. They ignite their sabers, implying that their plan is no longer to capture Ben but kill him for falling to the Dark Side and taking the life of their friend.
For more on Kylo Ren, check out the video below where the Force Awakens fight choreographer breaks down how he constructed the epic battle between Rey and Kylo Ren:
Joshua is Senior Features Editor at IGN. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
Cuphead is invading Super Smash Bros. Ultimate‘s Spirit Board on Friday, February 14 for a five-day event with four themed battles, developer Studio MDHR announced.
The Cuphead Spirit event–called “Ready? Wallop!”–will run from February 14-19 and gives you the chance to collect four spirits based on the run-and-gun game’s characters. It will feature four themed battles resembling Cuphead scenarios, where you can pick up Cuphead, Mugman, King Dice, and The Devil as spirits to use in Adventure or Custom Smash mode.
Good Golly!! The five-day #SmashBrosUltimate Cuphead Spirit event “Ready? Wallop!” starts on 2/14. Participate in four themed battles resembling scenarios from Cuphead, and earn collectible Spirits representing Cuphead, Mugman, King Dice, and The Devil! pic.twitter.com/PivBwg7pis
This isn’t Cuphead’s only inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Players who create a Mii Gunner can purchase a Cuphead skin that replaces the entire model with a Smash Ultimate rendition of the titular character. This coincided with the launch of the game’s eighth Fire Emblem character, Fire Emblem: Three Houses‘ Byleth. The inclusion of Byleth garnered some backlash, with some fans voicing disapproval at the number of Fire Emblem characters in the game. Smash Ultimate’s director Masahiro Sakurai agrees there are too many Fire Emblem fighters.
“There are too many Fire Emblem characters. And there are too many sword characters. I, too, understand,” Sakurai wrote in a Famitsu magazine column. “However, these things are already decided, so we move forward.”
