Month: October 2020

Green Lantern has received a 10-episode, straight-to-series order from HBO Max. Billed as a one-hour drama, Seth Grahame-Smith (IT, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) will serve as showrunner and co-write with Marc Guggenheim. What’s most interesting, though, about today’s announcement from HBO Max is which famous Green Lantern Corps members will apparently not be on the show.

While it says the series “will depict the adventures of a multitude of Lanterns,” the official logline for Green Lantern makes no mention of iconic Lanterns Hal Jordan and John Stewart:

“From HBO Max, DC, Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television comes a bold adaptation of the iconic comic book franchise, a saga spanning decades and galaxies. GREEN LANTERN will depict the adventures of a multitude of Lanterns, including Guy Gardner, Jessica Cruz, Simon Baz and Alan Scott — Earth’s first Green Lantern, who, true to the comics, is a gay man — and many more. The series will also include fan favorites such as Sinestro and Kilowog, and will also introduce new heroes to the ranks of the Green Lantern Corps.”

While Sinestro and Kilowog are aliens, the rest of the listed protagonists are all Earthlings.

Alan Scott was actually the original Golden Age Green Lantern, while Guy Gardner was a 1980s creation known for his pugnacious personality and bowl cut hairdo.

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More recent characters Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz will bring some diversity to the ranks as the first Latina and Muslim members of the Green Lantern Corps.

While not stated, it’s possible HBO Max’s parent company Warner Bros. are holding on to the DC characters of Hal Jordan and John Stewart for another Green Lantern feature film.

Green Lantern’s last big-screen outing was, of course, the 2011 disappointment starring Ryan Reynolds as Hal Jordan. That movie also featured the characters of Sinestro and Kilowog.

Notably, before taking the reins of HBO Max’s Green Lantern, Seth Grahame-Smith was one of the directors attached to make The Flash movie.

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The cast and executive producers of BBC America’s The Watch hit New York Comic Con’s virtual event today to discuss the new series, which is an adaptation of the late, beloved Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of comic/fantasy novels. A trailer and several clips were also revealed for the show. Read on for the details of what happened at the panel, and be sure to also check out our preview of the NYCC 2020 panels we’re most excited about.

According to BBC America, The Watch focuses on “an unlikely group of misfits, The City Watch, [who] find the guts to save the world, surprising even themselves in the process. The comedic yet thrilling series pits trolls, werewolves, wizards and other improbable heroes against an evil plot to resurrect a great dragon which would lead to the destruction of life as they know it.”

Watch the trailer here:

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Series stars Richard Dormer (Game of Thrones), Lara Rossi (I May Destroy You), Adam Hugill (1917), Jo Eaton-Kent (Don’t Forget the Driver), and Marama Corlett (Blood Drive) headed up the NYCC panel along with executive producers Simon Allen (The Musketeers) and Richard Stokes (Broadchurch).

Stokes explained that when developing The Watch, it became clear that none of the Discworld books individually lend themselves very well to an eight-part television series, which is what they were making. “So we had to do a sort of pick and mix of the best bits across the range of books and invent our own series, invent our own world,” he said. “And that’s where, with everyone’s blessing, Simon came in, who was able to do his own unique and original take on the characters and the stories. And that was attractive to BBC America, to have a show that was original, had a sort of anarchic, irreverent wit to it. You don’t need to know the books to be able to enjoy the series.”

Allen talked about the band of improbable heroes at the center of the story. “The City Watch … are these kind of flawed but adorable band of magical misfits in a corrupt fantasy city that they’re kind of loitering in the margins of when we meet them,” said the EP. “The world that [Pratchett] wrote and that we base our show in is so kind of warped and upside-down and off its axis.”

A variety of clips from the series were unveiled during the panel. The first began with a title card taken from the books: “Somewhere in a distant secondhand set of dimensions.” In it, we find Richard Dormer as Captain Sam Vimes as he meets Death itself. Wendell Pierce (The Wire, Selma) is voicing Death in the show, it was revealed during the panel, and Pierce even did a short voice-only Q&A after the clip (in character as Death).

The next clip featured Dormer’s character meeting Lara Rossi’s Lady Sybil Ramkin. Vimes is in chains along with several other prisoners as Lady Sybil enters, leaving a hellscape of fire behind her in the previous room… though her arm is on fire just a tad. Vimes tries to tell her this, but she insists he raise his hand before speaking, like a child in school, which is fairly difficult because, again, he’s in chains. It’s all very over-the-top, and anyone expecting Dormer’s more stolid approach from Game of Thrones will be surprised by the array of comedic facial tics and exaggerated expressions he brings to his character here.

This carried over to his answer during the panel when he was asked that old chestnut of a question: How did you approach the role?

“Ooooh, the boots,” he said. “I had a great pair of boots. And I just thought it’s all about the walk. And it’s about a man who’s downtrodden. Nobody listens to him, he’s dissolute, he’s an alcoholic. He’s pretty low in his life.”

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Rossi explained that Lady Sybil is a character who has a problem with the way her world operates. “She decides that it’s wrong and she wants to do something about it, and she takes matters into her own hands,” she says. “She’s also extremely pompous and entitled and makes mistakes and she kind of learns from them, and she knows that she’s always trying her best, but she’s always on a mission on her own very much.”

The next clip introduced Adam Hugill as Constable Carrot, Jo Eaton-Kent as Constable Cheery, and Marama Corlett as Corporal Angua as Vimes ingests some “poison” which causes him to go blind before having a vision of “stars, the universe, so many worlds…” All of which pop up on screen floating around his head as they might Daffy Duck in a Looney Tunes short. And that’s before things go off the rails due to the concentration of poison, with Vimes being “driven through sobriety and out the other side of it.” The City Watch assemble!

Look for The Watch on BBC American in January, 2021.

While Marvel Comics recently wrapped up its Avengers/Fantastic Four team-up Empyre and kicked off the X-Men crossover X of Swords, the publisher is saving arguably its biggest event comic for the end of 2020. King in Black is the climax of writer Donny Cates and artist Ryan Stegman’s Venom saga so far, and the creators are teasing some profound changes for Eddie Brock in the wake of this crossover.

Both Cates and Stegman headlined Marvel’s “Venom: King in Black” panel at NYCC 2020. The duo discussed their latest collaboration and how this new story serves as the final part of a trilogy that began in 2018’s Venom: Rex and continued in 2019’s Absolute Carnage. But even though the start of King in Black is still nearly two months away, they weren’t afraid to hint at the major fallout of the crossover and tease the upcoming Venom #200.

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“The events of King in Black change Eddie Brock in a profound way,” said Cates. “I know that we here at Marvel say that all the time. We say, ‘This is a game-changing thing! This character will never be the same. The universe will never be the same.’ I like to think I’ve never said it and it not come true. But this is a fundamental change to Eddie Brock and his place in the larger universe and his place as a Marvel character going forward.”

Stegman added, “Pretty much, good luck to whoever has to work on it after us.”

Interestingly, Stegman’s comment seems to confirm that both he and Cates are finished with Venom after King in Black wraps up in early 2021. However, Marvel isn’t yet confirming whether the series is due for a creative team change next year.

Cates did, however, reveal that Venom will temporarily revert to its legacy numbering when the series reaches the issue #200 milestone immediately after King in Black #5.

“The issue right after King in Black is Venom #200,” said Cates. “[King in Black is] earth-shattering and insane and it’s oversized. It’s filled with things that I’ve been imagining in my head since I was a little kid. And right after that, Ryan and I are doing issue #200 – Venom’s 200th issue.”

Cates continued, “It’s gonna be a really, really, really special issue, and it’s gonna be the beginning of something new – the beginning of something you’ve never seen before from Eddie, that you’ve never seen before in the dynamic between him and his family and his symbiote… It’s a really special issue that will set the stage for the next 200 to 2000 to 2 million issues of that amazing character going forward.”

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King in Black #1 will hit stores on December 2, 2020.

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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.

Now that Lab Zero Games has essentially dissolved following controversy with game director Mike Zaimont, publisher 505 Games has confirmed that production has ended for Indivisible.

At present, there is an update in submission for the Nintendo Switch that will add more challenges, a New Game+ mode, and couch co-op, bringing Indivisible on Nintendo Switch to the same developmental level as the other platforms. After this, 505 Games has no plans to introduce more content or updates for the game. This patch starts rolling out on October 13.

“At this stage, apart from content that is already in submission, there will unfortunately be no more production on [Indivisible],” 505 Games said in a development update post. “We understand that longtime players have been waiting for guest characters as well as some backer-created characters. Regretfully, this additional content will not be added to the game.”

505 Games explained why backer-created and guest characters won’t be added to Indivisible in the update post, saying the “IP holder for at least one of the guest characters has backed out” of the partnership following the dissolution of Lab Zero. 505 expects more will follow suit.

Physical editions of Indivisible for Nintendo Switch are still expected to arrive this November in limited supply at select retailers, and 505 said it will provide updates closer to the release.

Furthermore, the physical IndieGoGo backer reward left to fulfill, the Ajna/Heruka statue, is still coming. 505 is taking over production and will share information about the reward soon.

Though Lab Zero Games may have dissolved, employees of the studio are still in game development. A team of former devs established a worker-owned studio called Future Club with the aim of creating memorable games using handcrafted 2D animation and responsive gameplay.

All this month, starting October 6, Jason Blum’s “Welcome to the Blumhouse”-branded thriller anthology airs on Amazon. Dropping weekly as double features, the first two films out of the gate are Black Box and The Lie. Those looking for artfully-made, thought-provoking genre films during spooky season might want to tune in to Prime Video on Tuesdays for the next few weeks to see what creepy capers come crawling in the night.

The following are reviews for the first two films, from first-time feature director Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour Jr. and The Killing’s Veena Sud – neither of which are necessarily horror films, per se, though Black Box does reside in a realm of sci-fi uncomfortableness. Both movies, curiously, open with a shot of a happy family holding their newborn baby if one was looking for a more direct connection between them, as these tales very much have to do with broken families and the (sometimes deadly) desire to recapture previous happiness.

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Black Box Review

In the meditative mad scientist mystery Black Box, which borrows a teensy bit here and there from Inception (the lead character’s name is Nolan, even) and Get Out, Mamoudou Athie plays man who survived a car crash that killed his wife and now struggles daily to take care of his young daughter while living with severe memory loss. Desperate to recover and reclaim his life, Athie’s Nolan visits Phylicia Rashad’s Dr. Brooks for an experimental trip inside his own mind using a virtual memory catcher called the “black box.” Inside his own head, Nolan finds himself in the midst of memories that don’t line up with his own life while, outside in the real world, he continues to display signs of anger issues that he never had previous to the crash.

Black Box is a film that has all the dressings and makings of a ghoulish “malevolent spirit” tale but it’s actually less deranged than it appears. There’s a Twilight Zone-ish twist that’s a little too easy to get out ahead of because the story takes a little too long to unspool. This is a good TV episode hiding inside a stretched-out movie, though the performances are strong and it will never not be fun to see Phylicia Rashad sink her teeth into this kind of gently-menacing role.

Once Black Box answers its lingering questions, heading into the third act, the rest doesn’t really pay off. The build is better than the pay-off. And because Nolan’s mind experiment is loosey-goosey (aside from the hard rule that he is not to exit from any door) it kind of becomes narrative clay, remolding itself to play out however the story needs it to. The strongest element in Black Box resides between Nolan and his daughter Ava (Amanda Christine) and the unsettling, off-key dynamic of a little girl, having lost one parent, now needing to become the caregiver for her other parent. It’s the issue that drives Nolan into Brooks’ chair in the first place and it’s almost the more interesting story.

SCORE: 6

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The Lie Review

Those possibly looking for less-stressful fare these days should steer clear of Veena Sud’s The Lie, which after a few years of collecting dust is now a part of the Welcome to the Blumhouse collection. Starring Peter Sarsgaard, The Killing’s Mireille Enos, and The Kissing Booth’s Joey King, The Lie is a righteous nail-biter of a story about a divorced couple who spiral into self-preservation mode after their teen daughter admits to killing her friend.

The tension mounts and mounts here, with one lie following another in the tradition of “crime gone awry” movies like A Simple Plan and Fargo. And at the heart of everything is young Kayla (King), who’s had to watch her parents split apart and become more and more detached from, and disinterested in, her as they focused on their own careers and/or romantic relationships. Kayla is not well and the film nicely shifts back and forth between painting her as either an immature prankster or a very emotionally disturbed girl who has no interest in covering up what she’s done like her parents do.

The Lie has some tremendous scene work that really helps the viewer understand each wrong move (it kind of has to since it must very quickly justify its main characters doing horrendous things) but looming over it all is the narrative knowledge that this will not end well. It’s that kind of story. So when the knife does twist right in the final minutes, it’s expected. The full explanation also doesn’t land completely right, but King’s performance in the film, especially in the final moments, is a harrowing peek inside emotional unwellness.

SCORE: 7

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.

Square Enix has detailed when Final Fantasy XIV‘s next big content update will drop. During its latest Letter from the Producer broadcast, Square Enix confirmed that Patch 5.4, titled Futures Rewritten, will arrive in early December, and it’ll introduce a wealth of additional content for the Shadowbringers expansion.

Among other things, Patch 5.4 will add new main scenario quests. As Square Enix describes, “Following the grand conclusion of the Shadowbringers story in Patch 5.3, players will set out on a new adventure” in December’s update. The patch will also introduce the third installment in the Eden raid series, as well as the next chapter in the Sorrow of Werlyt questline.

Beyond that, Patch 5.4 will also bring the dreaded Emerald Weapon to Final Fantasy XIV. Players will be able to challenge it in both normal and extreme difficulties. There will also be a new dungeon, Matoya’s Relict, which is going to be part of the new main story questline. On top of that, the patch will introduce a new Unreal trial and a new Explorer mode that lets you venture around dungeons to take screenshots without have to worry about dealing with enemies.

Other changes coming in Patch 5.4: Violins will be added to the range of playable instruments; the Blue Mage job will receive numerous tweaks, including an increased level cap; the Triple Triad minigame is getting revised match rules and new limited-time tournaments; and more.

In the meantime, Patch 5.35 will arrive next week, on October 13. That update will bring its own assortment of new content to the game, including the next chapter in the Save the Queen questline and the new Bozjan Southern Front battle content. You can read more about the upcoming patches on Square Enix’s website.

Beyond the new content updates, Square Enix confirmed that Final Fantasy XIV will be backwards compatible with PS5, and it’ll enjoy some enhancements on the newer console. According to the publisher, the game will load much quicker on PS5, and players will be able to use its PS4 Pro display settings when playing it on PS5.

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