Author: Trafficblast

As he has said before, Sacha Baron Cohen is finished with the Borat character. He told Entertainment Weekly that the 2020 sequel would be his last because filming the movies got “too dangerous” due to the stunts he was pulling and the risks he was taking.

“It got too dangerous,” he said. “There were a couple of times I had to put on a bulletproof vest to go and shoot a scene, and you don’t want to do that too many times in your life. I was pretty lucky to get out this time, so no, I’m not doing it again. I’m going to stay with the scripted stuff.”

Also in the interview, Baron Cohen spoke about the challenging nature of filming the Borat movies, which required him to fully immerse himself in the character while also keeping a section of his brain available to make notes for the production of the film.

“You can be physically assaulted. You can even be shot,” he said “I never broke character thought internally, and this is an old thing to talk about since I’ve never talked about it, is that mentally, while I’m still fully in character to the person that I’m with, I mentally taking notes of things that are useful for the movie. Like a good poker player, you can never reveal to your opponents that what they’ve said is significant or in any way shocking. Otherwise they’re not going to feel comfortable enough to reveal anything else.”

“There were two things going on. There’s the outward impression to the people around me and then there’s what is going on inside my brain.”

Back in January, Baron Cohen spoke about how he was “fairly traumatized” after filming the 2009 comedy Bruno and he thought he was done playing undercover characters. But he came back to make the Borat sequel because he believed that “democracy was in peril.” He wanted people to see the movie and decide to not vote for Trump.

“I brought Borat out because of Trump,” he said. “There was a purpose to this movie, and I don’t really see the purpose to doing it again. So yeah, he’s locked away in the cupboard.”

While Baron Cohen might not bring back Borat for a third movie, actress Maria Bakalova, who played Borat’s daughter Tutar in the sequel, has said she would be up for reprising her character.

Video game movies have long been seen as cursed, with adaptations usually turning out mediocre at best and terrible at worst. Yet something has shifted in the last few years, with films such as Detective Pikachu and Sonic The Hedgehog proving the formula can work, and studios snapping up adaptation deals at incredible rates. A feature by The Ringer has looked into the phenomenon, tapping a few industry experts to explain how and why the industry interest in games has grown so exponentially.

A few projects were singled out as turning points in the reputation of video game adaptations including Sonic The Hedgehog, the 2020 film which overcame a rough start to become one of the top performing video game movies ever.

Dmitri Johnson, who co-produced Sonic under his company dj2 Entertainment, was involved in the movie’s on-again-off-again production since 2012. He said that “everyone thought it was a joke,” during the early phases of production, but that attitudes changed following the film’s highly successful release. “Shortly after that, the incoming calls definitely increased from studios [and] networks saying, ‘Hey, whaddya got next?'”

“I think from the business side, that’s when that part clicked,” said Mike Goldberg, a partner at the talent agency that represents Johnson. He added that Sonic was “a huge win for the concept that movies can actually do well based off video game IP. It isn’t a curse, it’s all about what that partnership looks like and what that execution is.”

Simon Pulman, a lawyer who is frequently involved in licensing franchises for film, pointed the finger at Netflix’s successful adaptations as a reason for the industry interest. He pointed to the Henry Cavill-led Witcher series as “something that really raised all tides” for video game adaptations.

As far as why some of the new movies have been working out where past video game adaptations failed, all three of the professionals interviewed pointed to an increased spirit of collaboration with the studios and creatives who make the game.

“In the past, when a studio would take a game IP, be it Super Mario Bros., or name an early adaptation, I think it was common practice to take the IP, ‘Thank you very much,’ and kind of shove the partner to the side,” Johnson said.

“There is a new generation of executives who play games and understand games,” Pulman said. “And therefore, they understand the value of the IP. They understand the value of the community and the gamers, and they’re respectful towards the source material. I don’t think I’ve done a game deal in the last three years where the game publisher or the game developer has not been involved in some capacity, and that has been a big change.”

There’s plenty of examples of this spirit of collaboration in upcoming productions, such as the HBO The Last of Us TV series which has brought Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann on as a writer and collaborator.

Of course this doesn’t mean that modern video game movies are all going to be bomb-proof–last year’s Monster Hunter movie failed to hit with audiences or critics, no matter whether they liked the games or not. The Warcraft movie of a few years ago was another high-profile video game flop, but we can only hope that more adaptations of gaming’s most beloved franchises will see success on the level of Sonic, or Netflix’s Witcher.

Nickelodeon is establishing a new division dedicated entirely to creating content in the Avatar: The Last Airbender franchise. Avatar Studios is being run by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, creators of the original animated series. The duo will also serve as co-chief creative officers as the studio creates new animated series and movies set in the world of Avatar.

As reported by Deadline, Avatar Studios will produce content that will be aired on Nickelodeon, the home of the original series and its spin-off, The Legend of Korra. The content will also make its way to Paramount+, as well as third-party platforms. Theatrical releases are also expected for the movies.

An animated movie is the first project for Avatar Studios and will begin production later this year.

“Avatar The Last Airbender and [The Legend of Korra] have grown at least ten-fold in popularity since their original hit runs on Nickelodeon, and Ramsey Naito and I are incredibly excited to have Mike and Bryan’s genius talent on board to helm a studio devoted to expanding their characters and world into new content and formats for fans everywhere,” said ViacomCBS Kids & Family president Brian Robbins.

“Creator-driven stories and characters have long been the hallmarks of Nickelodeon, and Avatar Studios is a way to give Mike and Bryan the resources and runway to open up their imaginations even more and dive deeper into the action and mythology of Avatar as we simultaneously expand upon that world and the world of content available on Paramount+ and Nickelodeon.”

Beyond the two existing animated series, Avatar has branched out into comic books with some success. Less successful, however, was a live-action adaptation directed by M. Night Shyamalan, which was critically panned and is derided by fans. Netflix is currently working on an Avatar series, but the franchise’s original creators are no longer involved.

Beavis and Butt-Head are finally making a return. The animated comedy duo will star in a new movie headed directly to the new streaming service Paramount+, announced today during the ViacomCBS investors day call.

Both Beavis and Butt-Head joined the call via Zoom to announce the project. Check out their cameo below.

News about the movie’s planned premiere, premise, and production schedule have been kept a mystery. The movie has no title as of yet and it is unclear of who the original creative team will be involved at this time. The animated Zoom call certainly sounded like the work of series creator Mike Judge, but his name was not mentioned in the presentation. This is the second Beavis and Butt-Head feature film, following the 1996 theatrical movie, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.

Paramount+ will launch on March 4.

The slices of the streaming pie are getting smaller and smaller, but ViacomCBS is working hard to grab its piece. Paramount+, recently rebranded from CBS All Access, is heading to its back catalog once again. The service announced a raft of new shows greenlit for Paramount+ this week, cherry-picking from films as far back as 1969.

Joining the previously-announced Grease prequel musical and Godfather documentary are five new shows based on films from Paramount’s library: The Italian Job, Fatal Attraction, Love Story, Flashdance, and The Parallax View.

Each show is taking a slightly different approach to updating its material. The Italian Job acts as a sequel to the original 1969 film–ignoring the 2003 remake. The show will focus on the grandchildren of Michael Caine‘s character, Charlie Croker, who inherit his safety deposit box and set out to find the Italian bullion from the movie. Hawaii Five-O writer Matt Wheeler is helping the show. Donald De Line, who produced that 2003 remake, is onboard as well.

Fatal Attraction released in 1987 starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close as a man stalked by a woman with whom he had a one night stand. The new series will update the material, according to Paramount Television Studios President Nicole Clemens, with modern attitudes toward things like personality disorders and stalking. Stanley Jaffe and Sherry Lansing, who produced the original film, are back on board to produce. Alexandra Cunningham and Kevin Hynes of Dirty John will write the script.

Also coming are Love Story, based on the 1970 film and produced by The O.C. and Gossip Girl masterminds Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage; Flashdance will bring the 1983 feature to life in a modern-day setting focusing on a Black woman in the ballet world; The Parallax View, about a journalist investigating a secretive organization called The Parallax Corporation, does not yet have a writer attached, though Paula Wagner (Mission: Impossible) will executive produce.

Paramount has not revealed premiere dates or time frames for any of these shows just yet, as most of them are in very early stages of pre-production.

Paramount+ launches March 4.

The first footage of the highly anticipated Halo show has debuted–but you’re not allowed to see it. The footage was shown during ViacomCBS’s February 24 investor presentation, but as the company introduced whatever was shown, the screen faded to a blue screensaver for most of the people watching. It seems only the actual investors on the call got to see what the Halo show will look like.

No doubt Halo fans will find this to be a lackluster way for ViacomCBS to finally show off the Halo series. The footage was played directly after the company announced that the series won’t air on Showtime after all, but on the ViacomCBS streaming service Paramount+ (previously CBS All Access). That news came along with a ton of other Paramount+ news, like the announcement of a Beavis and Butt-Head movie and a Frasier revival.

The Halo show has been in the works for years, originally with Steven Spielberg attached. We still know very little about it, besides a handful of casting appointments (such as Orange is the New Blacks’ Pablo Schreiber as Master Chief and Jen Taylor, who played Cortana in the Halo games, reprising her role). We also know that the show has shot in Budapest.

Other than that, details about the Halo show are scarce–unless, of course, you’re a ViacomCBS investor who got to see the first footage from the series debut. So, yeah–if you know one, send them our way. In the meantime, look forward to Paramount+ debuting March 4, and the Halo show arriving sometime after that.

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War‘s big new Season 2 update is officially out now, bringing with it a long list of new content, including one of the most substantial updates to Zombies to date.

The centerpiece of the new Zombies update is the large-scale Outbreak mode that gives fans of the fan-favorite mode yet another way to play and mow down zombies in a new setting.

We caught up with a handful of developers from Treyarch–including lead writer Craig Houston, game designer Kevin Drew, and studio creative director Corky Lehmkuhl–to discuss the new Outbreak mode and elaborate on some of the other changes coming to Zombies with the Season 2 update.

The full interview touches on things like the inspiration for the Outbreak mode, what players can expect in terms of Easter eggs and secrets, how the game keeps the mood feeling tense and scary in a more wide-open playspace, and how the new Crystals work. The developers also touch on the new investigation types and the open-ended nature of Outbreak in general.

The full interview follows further down the page, while you can check out more of GameSpot’s Black Ops Cold War/Warzone Season 2 stories below.

What was the inspiration for creating this new large-scale Outbreak mode for Zombies and how does it differentiate itself from the other Zombies offerings?

Studio Creative Director Corky Lehmkuhl: This is something that we’ve always wanted to do at the studio. We’ve talked about this since around Black Ops, this scale of the Zombies experience. But the technology hasn’t been there for us to be able to deliver this and we’re just all very grateful that this moment in time allowed us to see this thing come to life. I’ll just say that it’s a mode that will appeal to casual players that are new to Zombies, but it’s also compelling for hardcore players. I think it’s a really nice hybrid.

Zombies is known for its easter eggs and hidden secrets, so what can players expect in that department with Outbreak?

Lehmkuhl: On this project we’ve actually made it a mission to make Easter Eggs more accessible on what we call “the main quest”. There are some side easter eggs that are still somewhat obscure but you’ll have to find them yourselves.

We’ve seen some larger Zombies locations before, but Outbreak seems to be the biggest ever. How did you go about designing the encounters to still feel tense and scary when you’re not in a more confined space?

Game Designer Kevin Drew: It was a challenging problem filling a large vast space with some of our technical limitations, so what we ended up doing was we paired this idea of “hotzones” where we have populated enemies throughout the large spaces, and as you engage those pockets, more spawn around you. So, sometimes if you start combat from far away you can just snipe a couple of zombies and that’s it.

“It was a challenging problem filling a large vast space with some of our technical limitations” — Treyarch Game Designer Kevin Drew

But if you go into that area and you engage that group, suddenly there could be 15 or 20 more zombies that spawn around you. So you get caught off guard and feel like you’ve almost sprung a trap. So that’s how we increase that tension in the worldspace. And then objectives, the driving force of the mode, is where we’re really able to bring all the players into a set location that’s a lot tighter, and we can really ramp up the tension there and spawn a lot of zombies.

Along those lines, Outbreak doesn’t have any set paths from objective to objective, and there are no time limits. What kinds of possibilities do you think this will open up for players that they couldn’t do before in previous versions of Zombies?

Lehmkuhl: For me, I can just really focus on becoming powerful and planning for those later regions, because you can go at your own pace. For your first region, you could just spend 40 minutes just looting and killing zombies and gaining up resources to make the next region. You can get ahead of the curve a little bit, whereas in round-based, it’s almost like you’re just barely keeping up and sometimes you can’t get ahead of it.

Lead Writer Craig Houston: I think it definitely lets people strategize a little bit more about how they want to play and how they want to approach each of the different objectives and the world events that happen. I certainly need to spend a lot of time powering myself up if I’m going to survive through more than a couple of regions. I think even more so than round based zombies, this lets you have a little bit more freedom. And as Kevin said, control the pace of the game and how you’re going to progress.

Drew: Because of how much of how many random elements there are in the mode, it just leads itself to be so different every time you play it. I think that’s what’s exciting for me. It will kind of organically create a path for you as you enter a map and you get drawn to different areas because the objective is over in a certain direction and you’ll go heading in that direction. You’ll encounter things that will inform what you want to do next.

You might find a legendary wall buy, and all of a sudden now my goal is to farm this region until I have enough points to get this legendary gun before I go to that objective. Or you might open up a chest and find a really awesome gun and you’re happy and you want to go straight to the objective. So it’s that variety is what’s really engaging.

There are five main investigation types in Outbreak—Defend, Escort, Retrieve, Eliminate, and Holdout. What are these all about and do you expect players to gravitate toward any specific ones in particular?

Houston: They all have a different pace, that’s the thing that’s fun about them. When you go into each region, the particular objective you’re going to be given is randomized to keep the game fresh every time you play it. I think all of us probably have different favorite ones. One that might be your favorite when you’re doing your first objective might not be so fun once you’re onto your fifth, just because of the way that difficulty scales. I think they all have a different rhythm and a different feel to them. And that’s one of the things that makes the mode feel so fun. Again, the more you’re doing in a role, the more intense it becomes.

Drew: I think people will just gravitate towards different ones based on your own personal play styles. Some of them are a little bit more narrative heavy, for example, Hold Out has some interesting implications about what’s going on with the greater story, where others are a little bit more scientific and just kind of fun.

Houston: To pick up on what Kevin said there, our cast of Requiem advisors, Grey, Strauss, Weaver and Carver, they’re running some of these operations, for their own research in particular areas. They just have a very different atmosphere and different implications for the broader story, as Kevin said, because this is much about the Cold War arms race between Omega and Requiem to try and harness the power of the Dark Aether.

You’re introducing the new Crystals with Outbreak—can you walk me through what those are what they bring to the table?

Drew: We wanted the original Raw Aetherium crystal grind to be a more casual-friendly grind, the time target on that was around 24 hours. Now that we’re releasing the new types, the time to acquire those is intended to be longer, and we are also establishing a bit of skill level requirement to earn those things. You have to be able to progress to a certain round or objective to start earning those types of crystals. That being said, it’s still tuned so if you’re able to get to Round 20 and do the Round 20 playlist, or get to Objective 3, you could still be earning all those crystals. And they are used, all skills are going to be having Tier 4 and Tier 5.