Month: September 2021

Following its third round of funding, Splitgate developer 1047 Games has raised $100 million, which the company says will help to carry out the studio’s long-term vision of revitalizing stale game genres.

In a press release, the studio confirmed that its most recent round of funding will help the studio to flesh out its vision for Splitgate as a top-tier, AAA competitive shooter and further establish the company as a “leading creative force of distinct and inventive IP in the gaming space”.

According to the developer, the additional financial firepower granted will help contribute towards its long-term ambition to create a new era of classic games. In doing so, 1047 Games will aim to act as a pioneer in genres that it says have “currently stalled”, by implementing “new takes in well-known, globally recognized genres.”

Long-term goals aside, however, CEO and co-founder of 1047 Games, Ian Proulx, confirmed that the studio’s immediate future is still fully committed to working on Splitgate. “Building on our core success with Splitgate is our main focus in the immediate future – we are rapidly scaling across all areas of our studio,” said Proulx.

“We are far from finished building out what we feel is the complete Splitgate experience for our loyal and dedicated fans. The funding secured from our partners, combined with the belief and support of our vision, enables us to focus on both our short-term growth needs, and more importantly, our long-term vision for 1047 Games as a premier driver of completely fresh gaming experiences for fans.”

1047 Games funding comes from a number of private equity firms. However, it’s venture capitalist company Lightspeed Venture Partners that has taken up the role of the studio’s lead investor. Amy Wu, a partner at the investment firm spoke further on what attracted the company toward 1047 Games.

“In gaming, Lightspeed focuses on founders that have a bold vision for innovation and the determination to build the next generational platform,” said Wu. “We found that with Ian and Nick. They’ve done so much with minimal funding, and we’re excited to see what they can do with more firepower. We’re proud to be assisting them as they take their brand to the next level.”

It’s hard to argue with the investment firm’s comments either. In August, 1047 Games announced that Splitgate would remain in open beta for the foreseeable future due to the unexpected popularity that the title had seen over the summer months. In little time, the developer worked hard to dramatically improve the game’s server capacity in order to cater to its newfound player base. The team then launched its first competitive season for Splitgate that added a new map called Karma Station into the game as well as a 100-level Battle Pass full of unlockable items, and a brand new mode called Contamination.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN who spends a lot of his time in Splitgate attempting to throw grenades at enemy portals. You can follow him on Twitter.

NBCUniversal’s streaming service Peacock has announced the cast for its Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reboot, which will be named simply Bel-Air. Among the cast of series regulars will be Jabari Banks, Adrian Holmes, and Cassandra Freeman.

Bel-Air is a “dramatic analogue” reimaging of the 90s sitcom Fresh Prince, which looks deeper into the conflicts, emotions, and biases of its characters during hour-long episodes. Will Smith’s character, Will, is set to be played by newcomer Jabari Banks. His wealthy aunt and uncle from Bel-Air, Phillip and Vivian Banks, will be portrayed by Adrian Holmes and Cassandra Freeman respectively.

The remainder of the cast are as follows: Olly Sholotan as Carlton Banks, Coco Jones as Hilary Banks, Akira Akbar as Ashley Banks, Jimmy Akingbola as Geoffrey, Jordan L. Jones as Jazz, and Simone Joy Jones as Lisa.

The show will executive produced and run by T.J. Brady and Rasheed Newson, who are working with Westbrook Studios, a division of Will Smith’s Westbrook Inc.

Last year a Fresh Prince reunion was held, which celebrated the 30th anniversary of the original sitcom. It seems safe to say from the stated direction of Bel-Air, it will be a fairly different show to the original and beloved Fresh Prince. Bel-Air is currently planned to air in 2022.

Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.

Ubisoft and Binge are teaming up for a live-action series adaptation of the popular Driver video game franchise.

GamesIndustry.biz reports that Driver is officially shifting gears and returning to screens with a live-action series that will “focus on undercover agent and ex-racecar driver John Tanner as he tries to take down a crime syndicate.” The series will be released exclusively on Binge, a new streaming platform dedicated to delivering premium entertainment for gamers.

The Driver series will be produced by Binge’s Vincent Talenti and Allan Ungar, who directed and co-wrote the Uncharted live-action fan film that took the internet by storm upon its release in 2018. The Driver series’ executive producers hail from Ubisoft Film & Television, with Jason Altman, Danielle Kreinik, and Genevieve Jones attached to the project.

“Our mission at Ubisoft is to bring our games to life in new and exciting ways and create content set in the world, culture and community of gaming,” Kreinik said of the new series. “Working with Binge will allow us to bring a Driver series directly to the audience who is most passionate about seeing this franchise come to life.”

“Having the opportunity to adapt Driver alongside the team at Ubisoft Film & Television is a dream come true,” Ungar added following the project’s announcement. “As longtime fans of the franchise, we’re excited to deliver an original, premium and rich storytelling experience that will take fans and newcomers on a thrilling ride.”

The first game of the Driver series was released for the PlayStation in 1999 and its runaway popularity fuelled five further main installments. IGN’s review of 2011’s Driver: San Francisco called it a “game-changing, eyebrow-raising idea” infused with “unparalleled variety and a ridiculous supernatural twist whilst staying true to its Seventies chase-movie roots.”

The new Driver series adaptation joins a growing slate of Ubisoft TV and movie projects, including a live-action Assassin’s Creed series for Netflix, a Beyond Good and Evil movie helmed by Detective Pikachu director Rob Letterman, and a movie based on The Division starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

After a series of release date shifts, Venom: Let There Be Carnage is finally only a few weeks away. Earlier this month, Sony and Columbia Pictures’ symbiote sequel received a PG-13 rating from the MPAA for “intense sequences of violence and action, some strong language, disturbing material, and suggestive references,” despite reports that an R rating was being considered for the follow-up.

In IGN’s Instagram Live interview with Andy Serkis on Tuesday, the Let There Be Carnage director explained how a PG-13 rating was necessary for the film to reach a larger audience. However, that imposition did not stop the filmmaker from focusing on the more disturbing elements of the story’s supervillain.

“You could go down an R-rated adult version of this. Of course you could,” Serkis explained. “You could have done that with the last film. But we wanted to reach a big audience with this and… there are several rules you have to abide by. However, having said that, I think we have pushed to the very limits [with] the danger and darkness and the threat and the menace of Carnage.”

Serkis elaborated on his approach, explaining that on-screen violence can be much more than buckets of blood.

“Just because you don’t see so much gore — perhaps there’s not so much blood or… seeing heads being bitten off — you can still suggest that,” Serkis continued. “The suggestion, leaving it to the audience’s imagination, can be just as powerful. I think that’s just what we managed to do. It’s certainly not shying away from the darkness. And the real heart of Carnage as a character isn’t compromised at all.”

After being delayed multiple times throughout the pandemic, Venom: Let There Be Carnage was most recently moved up two weeks on Sony’s release calendar. The sequel will hit theaters on October 1.

In our review of the first Venom, IGN gave the film a 4, saying that “Tom Hardy’s committed performance can’t overcome a painful script and indecisive direction.”

J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

Activision Blizzard is currently facing serious ongoing allegations of harassment and mistreatment of marginalized workers. To learn more, please visit our timeline as well as our in-depth report on the subject.

Next year’s Call of Duty game will be a sequel to 2019’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, according to new reports.

Industry insider Tom Henderson tweeted that Call of Duty 2022, codenamed Project Cortez, is expected to be a sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare reboot.

It looks like Call of Duty: 2022 is codenamed Project Cortez

It’s expected to be a sequel to Modern Warfare 2019.

— Tom Henderson (@_Tom_Henderson_) September 13, 2021

VGC also reports that Modern Warfare 2 is on the way next year and that it will include a campaign featuring U.S. special forces fighting Colombian drug cartels. Project Cortez was part of this week’s GeForce Now datamine, with Infinity Ward slated to be the developer.

In IGN’s Modern Warfare 2019 review, we called the game “great,” saying, “Modern Warfare’s gorgeous new Realism mode, the large-scale Ground War, and quick and dirty Gunfight help mix things up for a good time.” It would make sense for the series to follow up the 2019 reboot since Modern Warfare broke multiple sales records at the time of its release.

This year, it’s Sledgehammer Games’ turn to release the new Call of Duty, with Call of Duty: Vanguard set to come to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC on November 4. For more, check out our Call of Duty Vanguard multiplayer beta impressions. Or, read about how Call of Duty banned 100,000 accounts in a single day.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

It appears a remake for Destroy All Humans! 2 is real and in development.

In a now-deleted tweet, PlayStation officially announced the Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed noting the game will come to PS5. A trailer was also shared in the tweet as well but mentioned no release date. The end of the trailer also notes that THQ and Black Forest Games are tied to the remake; the latter also developed the remake for the original Destroy All Humans!

The tweet has since been deleted ahead of a planned THQ Nordic 10th-anniversary livestream set for later this week.

A modder has put the Super Mario 64 engine inside of Minecraft, creating a playable version of Mario in the game.

@pdxdylan posted on Twitter, showing off his work to get the polygonal plumber inside the blocky world of Minecraft. You can see Mario running around multiple biomes, showing off his triple jump, long jump, swimming, climbing, and more moves straight from the classic N64 title.

I’m working on a #Minecraft mod that runs the Super Mario 64 engine! It’s very WIP right now but here’s some highlights pic.twitter.com/QCfzl10ip0

— Dylan (@pdxdylan) September 13, 2021

IGN spoke to Dylan, who says he was inspired to make this project, simply because he knew it was possible, and that it would look a bit funny.

“I’ve done other work with Super Mario 64 before on other engines, but the thought of Mario in a completely different game intrigued me, so I decided to do it as a fun project,” Dylan said. “I’ve always been into tinkering with games, figuring out how they work, and making mods for them.”

Dylan says that this project was made possible by the n64decomp community, a group of fans and modders who reverse-engineered Super Mario 64 to decompile the source code. However, due to Nintendo’s history of issuing cease and desist orders for fan projects, Dylan doesn’t have any plans to release the Mario Minecraft mashup.

“I really do wish I could release it to the community. There’s a lot of potential for this mod, especially ideas like players being able to build their own courses for Mario to run around in, or speedrunners trying to beat Minecraft as Mario in the quickest time,” Dylan said. “However, due to Nintendo’s strict enforcement on fan games and mods, I don’t believe it will ever reach that point.”

Dylan says his personal end goal is to make Minecraft playable from start to finish as Mario. In a follow-up tweet, he also said he’ll continue posting videos of the project online, to keep giving the community glimpses of this fun mod.

Didn’t expect this to gain traction so quickly so I should prob. clarify: Due to how Nintendo deals w/ Fan projects (DMCAing em) I sadly can’t promise a download, either now or in the future. The most I can do now is post silly videos of what I do in-game with it

— Dylan (@pdxdylan) September 14, 2021

For more wacky Super Mario 64 mods, you can watch the gameplay of Peach’s Castle as a playable level in GoldenEye 007. Or, for something Nintendo encourages you to build and modify yourself, check out the recently-revealed LEGO Super Mario 64 playset.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

A sequel to the 1988 comedy Twins is officially a go, with Tracy Morgan set to join Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito as the pair’s third brother, per Deadline. Triplets is currently being shopped in the Toronto Film Festival market, with the production sending out a reel of the three actors to potential buyers. The production is aiming to begin filming in January 2022, with director Ivan Reitman also set to return to the director’s chair.

“I haven’t directed in a couple years, but Arnold kept saying, ‘C’mon, we had such a great time,'” Reitman said. “I had a great time doing the first one, and this is going to be fun.”

Triplets will reportedly follow Schwarzenegger and DeVito’s Benedict brothers as they come into contact with a long lost brother played by Morgan.

The original Twins was an impressive commercial success for Universal when it released in theaters in 1988. The film grossed $216 million worldwide against a reported production budget of $18 million. A sequel has been in the works for nearly a decade, with reports of Eddie Murphy’s attachment to the project emerging in 2012.

Reitman confirmed that Murphy was a large factor in the sequel’s conception, though the director assured that Morgan will be a fantastic replacement.

“This whole thing started with Arnold meeting Eddie Murphy, and the suggestion came from one of them,” Reitman said. “We started a script with Eddie, and after the success he had with Amazon Prime on Coming 2 America, he got himself booked up heavily. And we knew we were going to make it at the beginning of next year. I’d been good friends with Tracy Morgan for a long time and always thought he was one of the funniest men in the world. I thought he would make a terrific triplet, and we rewrote the whole script for him.”

For more on Twins and twins in general, check out how DeVito and Schwarzenegger stack up in our rundown of the best movie twins of all time.

J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.