Publisher 505 Games has announced that a sequel to Ghostrunner is in development for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. The upcoming title does not have a release window yet, but 505 confirmed that One More Level, the studio behind the original game, is developing Ghostrunner 2.
In a press release, 505 announced it is doubling its investment for the sequel and contributing an “initial budget” of €5 million (about $6 million USD) for its development. “Ghostrunner is a brand with great potential, capable of contributing for a long time to the 505 Games product portfolio,” the publisher said.
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“We are particularly excited about the future release of Ghostrunner 2. Together with One More Level, we have created a thrilling and engaging video game,” Raffaele Galante, co-CEO of 505’s parent company, Digital Bros., said in the press release.
The original Ghostrunner launched in October 2020 and has been a big commercial success for 505 Games, selling more than 600,000 copies across PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. The game is slated to release on PS5 and Xbox Series X|S by the end of this year.
Ghostrunner has also earned positive reviews from critics. GameSpot scored it a 7/10 and called it a “a hard-charging parkour climb” in our Ghostrunner review. “When Ghostrunner rips, it really rips. Wall-running, jumping, sliding, and cutting through enemies as you go is empowering and impressive,” critic Mike Epstein wrote.
If you hoped EA and Xbox’s recent partnership on Game Pass meant you might be able to play Mass Effect Legendary Edition on the subscription service, we have some bad news. An EA community manager has confirmed that the only subscription service it’s available on is EA Play Pro.
If you’re a Game Pass Ultimate subscriber, you’ve instead automatically got a basic EA Play membership, which gets you a 10% discount on games in addition to access to the EA Play game library. You can of course still purchase Mass Effect Legendary Edition on the usual digital or retail storefronts.
Keep in mind that EA Play Pro is also a PC-exclusive membership, so if you’ve only got consoles around the house, you’re similarly out of luck. EA Play Pro is available for $15 a month, which gets you access to all the latest EA PC games at launch.
Still, it’s possible that Mass Effect Legendary Edition may come to Game Pass in the future. FIFA 21 similarly debuted on EA Play Pro, but landed on Game Pass a mere six months later. That’ll depend entirely on EA’s plans for the remastered trilogy, though.
“[Mass Effect Legendary Edition coming to Game Pass is] certainly a possibility, though I’m not aware of any current plans or a timeframe for anything beyond EA Play Pro access at this point,” EA said.
Still on the fence about whether or not to pick up the Mass Effect remaster? You might have to stay there a little while longer for IGN’s review. EA provided review codes on Monday, so reviews editor Dan Stapleton is still cracking through the massive RPG franchise, just not at the expense of his *checks notes* family? You can check out his very, very early off-the-cuff impressions in the link above.
During the Disney second quarter 2021 financial results call, Disney CEO Bob Chapek announced that Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and the upcoming action-comedy Free Guy starring Ryan Reynolds will have a 45-day exclusive theatrical window.
Much like Warner Bros. deal with Cineworld, these two high-profile movies under the Walt Disney Company umbrella will be exclusive to theaters for 45 days, but it is unclear where the films will head after that. Traditionally, theatrical releases had a 90-day exclusive window, something many movie studios have moved away from during the pandemic.
These films could jump right to streaming services with Shang-Chi landing on Disney+–possibly under Premier Access–and Free Guy on Hulu. Or both films could land on a transactional video on demand (TVOD) service like Google Play, Vudu, or more. As of this writing, the post-theatrical release plan is unknown.
Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings follows the titular character–played by Simu Liu–a man living in San Francisco with a dark family history. His father is a powerful villain who wants Shang-Chi to join the criminal life, which he rejects. The film also stars Awkwafina and is directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. The first trailer for the MCU movie arrived in April, and it releases in theaters on September 3.
Free Guy stars Ryan Reynolds as an NPC in a violent video game who becomes aware of the world around him and breaks free of his NPC life. The movie is directed by Shawn Levy (Stranger Things), and the first trailer arrived in December 2019. Because of the pandemic, it was pushed back numerous times, and will finally arrive in theaters on August 13.
Over the past year, Disney+ grew its subscriber base from 33.5 million to 103.6 million. While Disney Parks saw losses during the COVID-19 pandemic, the parent company’s streaming services all saw growth during this time. Additionally, Disney+ continued to pump out original TV shows like Season 2 of The Mandalorian, WandaVision, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, along with movies like Pixar’s Soul.
Disney’s upcoming movie Jungle Cruise, which stars Dwayne Johnson, was recently revealed to be getting a Disney+ Premier Access release simultaneously with a theatrical one.
This means that it won’t be getting the same simultaneous release that many other movies, from Black Widow to Cruella, will be getting. Instead, Shang-Chi will be doing things the old-fashioned way, by going with a theatrical release first.
Disney called it a sign of returning confidence in attending movie theaters, which have been hit hard for by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. Disney and other distributors have responded to the pandemic by releasing many of their films, such as Pixar’s Luca, exclusively on platforms like Disney Plus.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is slated for release on September 3.
The general rule of horror franchises is that, as the series continues, the plots get simpler and more repetitive, until the inevitable reboot which resets everything. Not so with the Saw series. What started in 2004 as a clever, gripping, but relatively modest thriller has, over the course of eight films, become a preposterously complicated narrative, with flashbacks, parallel subplots, recurring characters, twists, turns, and head-spinning callbacks. Spiral: From the Book of Saw is the ninth movie in the series, and it hits theaters this week. But it’s been four years since the last movie, 2017’s Jigsaw, which itself was preceded by a seven year gap since Saw 3D. So fans could be forgiven for not really remembering what the hell has happened so far.
The only true way to make sense of what’s going on is to sit through all of the previous movies–and handily, the first seven can be found on HBO Max, while Jigsaw is currently streaming on Peacock. But for those that don’t have time, here’s a recap of the essential elements of the story so far.
The main problem of attempting to chronicle the plot of the entire series is that so much happens out of sequence. Every movie contains flashbacks to scenes at different points in the timeline, with a variety of important events occurring before the first movie. So let’s go from the very start.
There are several key players in the Saw story, all of whom have some backstory that is revealed before the first movie kicks off. At the center we have John Kramer, also known as the Jigsaw Killer. Before he was a torture-obsessed maniac, Kramer was a morally responsible architect with an equally wholesome, pregnant wife named Jill, who ran a clinic for recovering drug addicts. But a robbery at the clinic led Jill to have a miscarriage, and soon after, poor Kramer discovered he had an inoperable brain tumor. He attempted suicide but failed, and then decided that his life should follow a darker course. He became determined to use his remaining time to set up a series of gruesome games, each one designed to test his victims’ will to live.
We also have Amanda, a recovering addict at Jill’s clinic, who was one of the people involved in the robbery. Kramer abducts her, and she survives his test–the infamous “reverse bear trap”– and is “reborn” as his apprentice.
Finally, there’s Hoffman, a cop whose sister was murdered by her boyfriend, Seth Baxter. Hoffman learns about the so-called Jigsaw killer, and uses a Jigsaw-style trap to kill Seth in an attempt to frame the serial killer. Kramer learns of this, abducts Hoffman, and blackmails him into becoming another apprentice.
Pre-Saw
Jigsaw, the eighth movie in the series, served as both a prequel and sequel, and started with Kramer’s first ever game, a ridiculously elaborate test involving the victims being pulled toward a wall of spinning buzzsaws. The sole survivor is a man named Logan, who (we later learn) mislabeled John Kramer’s X-Ray, delaying the diagnosis of his cancer. Kramer recruits Logan as his first ever apprentice and the pair design the reverse bear trap.
Saw
Now, onto the first Saw. The film centers on Dr. Gordon, the doctor who first diagnosed Kramer’s tumor, and a man named Adam. Adam is a photographer hired by a cop named Tapp to spy on Dr. Gordon. Tapp is convinced that Gordon is Jigsaw–he’s been framed by Hoffman (something we don’t discover until Saw V). Gordon and Adam have been chained and locked in a bathroom together, with a corpse on the floor.
An orderly at Gordon’s hospital named Zepp is working with Jigsaw, and will murder Gordon’s family unless he can escape in time. Gordon ends up sawing off his own foot, while Zepp is stopped from killing Gordon’s family by Tapp. All four end up in the same warehouse, where Zepp kills Tapp and Adam kills Zepp. Gordon shoots Adam before he escapes, and Adam is left to die in the room. FInally, the corpse in the center of the room stands up and reveals himself to be Jigsaw all along.
Between Saw and Saw II
Saw 3D: Gordon is nursed back to health by Jigsaw, and recruited to become another apprentice. He promises to keep Jill safe after Kramer is dead.
Saw III: Amanda enters the bathroom and kills Adam, who had not died from the gunshot wound Gordon inflicted at the end of Saw 1.
Saw II
A dodgy cop named Matthews raids Jigsaw’s hideout and learns that the maniac is holding eight prisoners–including Matthews’ son Daniel and an undercover Amanda–in a house that is slowly filling with a deadly nerve agent that will kill everyone still inside in two hours. Six of these victims were sent to prison as a result of Matthews planting false evidence, and one by one, they are killed by traps, leaving only Daniel and Amanda.
Matthews releases Jigsaw in exchange for the location of the house, but unfortunately these events took place days ago and what he thought was a live video feed was in fact a recording. It turns out Daniel was safe in Jigsaw’s lair all along. The film ends with Matthew locked in the bathroom from the first movie, while Jigsaw and Amanda escape.
Between Saw II and Saw III
Saw III: Matthews mangles his foot and escapes from the bathroom, but is caught by Amanda soon after.
Saw VI: Jill visits Kramer at the Gideon Meatpacking Plant, which Kramer built for many of his games, and where he is planning his next game. He gives her a mysterious key. Hoffman discovers Amanda’s involvement in the incident that led to Jill’s miscarriage, and uses it to blackmail her.
Saw III
Onto Saw III, and this is where things start to get really complicated, as the events of both Saw III and Saw IV take place simultaneously. Six months after Saw II, two cops named Rigg and Kerry are looking for Jigsaw, with the “help” of Hoffman. Kerry is abducted by Amanda and killed in a trap, with Rigg framed for the killing.
The movie largely focuses on a doctor named Lynn Denlon, who is placed in one of Jigsaw’s traps (the shotgun collar) by Amanda and forced to perform life-saving surgery on a bed-ridden Kramer. Meanwhile, a man named Jeff is consumed with a quest to avenge his son’s death by a drunk driver, and has his ability to forgive tested by Jigsaw. Needless to say, he doesn’t forgive anybody and everyone involved dies nastily.
Meanwhile, Lynn’s surgery is a success, but a jealous Amanda refuses to remove her collar and shoots her instead. Jeff turns up and shoots Amanda, then kills Jigsaw with a buzzsaw, which triggers Lynn’s collar. Bye Lynn!
Saw IV
As mentioned, Saw IV takes place at the same time as the bulk of Saw III. Rigg and Hoffman find Kerry’s body, and the movie introduces two new cops–Peter Strahm and Lindsey Perez, who figure out that Jigsaw must have accomplices. Rigg is abducted and forced to play a game in order to save Hoffman and Matthews. However, Hoffman is just pretending to have been captured and this is all part of his plan to frame Rigg.
Meanwhile, Strahm and Perez interview Kramer’s ex-wife Jill, and they learn about the Gideon Meatpacking Plant. During the subsequent investigation, Perez is injured by an exploding doll, so Strahm heads to the plant alone, where Rigg is playing his game. Rigg triggers a trap that kills Matthews, but not before Matthews can shoot him.
Strahm bursts in just after the ending of Saw III and shoots Jeff dead. Hoffman manages to capture him and locks him in the plant to play another game. Finally, during Kramer’s autopsy, a tape is found in his stomach that tells Hoffman he is to be tested, even after his master’s death.
Saw V
OK, four movies down, four to go. Ready for more? Saw V starts with Hoffman’s test for Strahm–his head sealed in a box that slowly fills with water. Strahm uses a pen to perform a tracheotomy on himself in order to survive. Meanwhile, Kramer leaves Jill a black box in his will.
The injured Strahm is placed on medical leave, with an FBI agent named Erikson taking over the Jigsaw case. But Strahm continues his investigations in private, correctly believing Hoffman is Jigsaw’s apprentice. Hoffman starts a new game, involving a group of people who were all connected by their involvement in a building fire that killed eight people. All but two of them die.
Strahm figures out that Hoffman was involved with the death of Seth (Hoffman’s sister’s boyfriend, who killed her–remember?) and gets confirmation that he was working with Jigsaw. But Hoffman has framed Strahm as Jigsaw’s final apprentice, putting Erikson on his trail. Strahm finds a human-size box, along with a tape from Hoffman telling Strahm to climb inside if he wants to survive. Instead, following a scuffle, Strahm throws Hoffman inside. Believing he has won, Strahm discovers that this was Hoffman’s plan all along. Hoffman’s box sinks into the floor, as the walls close in on Strahm, killing him as Hoffman watches from safety.
Saw VI
We’re getting there! Hoffman moves onto his next game, whose victims were specified by Kramer in Jill’s black box. The game focuses on William Easton, the corrupt CEO of the insurance company that refused to pay for experimental treatment that might have saved Kramer’s life. Hoffman forces him to weigh the lives of victims against each other. Inevitably most of them die horribly, and Easton himself ends up being fatally injected with acid by the son of another man whose treatment he refused to cover.
Meanwhile, Erikson and the now-recovered Perez figure out that Hoffman has been continuing Jigsaw’s work. Unfortunately, Hoffman is there at the time, and is able to dispatch both ridiculously easily with the use of hot coffee and a knife. He then destroys all the evidence pointing to him and frames Strahm once more. Honestly, Jigsaw’s apprentices should take more pride in their work instead of framing anyone they can think of.
The film ends with Jill kidnapping Hoffman and placing him in the reverse bear trap. She tells him this is Kramer’s final test for him. Hoffman manages to escape but not without tearing his face open. Eeeww!
Saw 3D
Deep breath, just two movies left. After Hoffman escapes from the trap, Jill runs to Internal Affairs detective Matt Gibson and offers her testimony about Hoffman’s involvement in exchange for protection. Hoffman remains committed to his work and embarks on yet another game based on Kramer’s posthumous directions, involving a self-help guru who falsely claims to have survived one of Jigsaw’s tests. Of course, when the test becomes a reality, he fails it badly.
Once that’s done, Hoffman embarks on a little killing spree, taking out Gibson, before finding Jill and fitting her with the reverse bear trap. After seven long films of teasing, we finally see it go off, killing Jill in splattery 3D style.
Hoffman gets ready to skip town, but is abducted by Dr. Gordon, who reappears after six films to finally reveal that he is yet another Jigsaw disciple (the retcon to end all retcons). He fulfils Kramer’s final request by trapping Hoffman and leaving him to die inside the bathroom in which the series began.
Jigsaw
Half of Jigsaw’s events take place pre-Saw 1; we covered that already. The film’s present storyline takes place 10 years after Jigsaw’ death. Logan, now working at the morgue, sets up a recreation of Kramer’s first game. The investigating cop, Halloran, suspects Logan’s Jigsaw-obsessed colleague Eleanor, but in the grand tradition of this series, Logan frames Halloran as the killer. The movie ends with Halloran and Logan–pretending to be a victim–waking up in a room, fitted with laser collars. Halloran confesses that he let criminals free for personal gain. Logan reveals he is this movie’s Jigsaw, and lets the lasers kill Halloran.
The Disney+ streaming service closed its second fiscal quarter of 2021–which ended on April 3 for Disney–with 103.6 million subscribers. This number is up from 33.5 million in March 2020, according to a recent release from Disney.
The Disney-owned Hulu grew 33% between March 2020 and 2021. Hulu now sits at 37.8 million subscribers for the streaming service. The Hulu + Live TV dropped from 4 million (as of January 2) to 3.8 million, a decline that comes after the service raised its prices back in November.
While Disney+ grew in paid subscribers, its average monthly revenue decreased from $5.63 to $3.99. This is because of Disney+ Hotstar’s launch, as the average monthly revenue per subscriber is “significantly lower.” Disney launched The Falcon And The Winter Soldier and WandaVision during this time–the MCU’s first two original live-action series.
While Disney Parks saw a significant hit because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney’s streaming services–Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+–all saw major growth in the past year. ESPN+ grew 75% reaching 13.8 million paid subscribers.
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Currently, the Disney+ price is $8 a month or $80 a year. There is also the Disney bundle, which consists of Disney+ with Hulu (ad-supported) and ESPN+ for $14 a month or the same bundle, with an ad-free Hulu, for $20 a month. Sadly, there is no free trial for Disney+.
Disney+ should continue to see growth for the rest of the year with original TV shows like Loki arriving to the streaming service, along with movies like Black Widow, Cruella, and Disney’s Jungle Cruise all coming to Premier Access later in the year.
Disney added just a few more million subscribers to Disney+ over the last couple of months, totaling just over 103 million, which executives will likely have to address on the company’s earnings call later today.
As people in the United States start to venture out again, questions about what’s next for Disney are likely to come up on the call. Disney is preparing for movies to be released in theaters again (Cruella, Black Widow), more attendees at parks (Disneyand is open and Avengers Campus is just about ready to debut), and sports are basically back (good news for ESPN). New shows like WandaVision and Falcon and the Winter Soldier are keeping people’s attention — but are they still driving subscriber growth? Are the rainclouds that hovered over nearly every single one of Disney’s sectors are beginning to lift, or is it still too early to tell?
“We’re pleased to see more encouraging signs of recovery across our businesses, and we remain focused on ramping up our operations while also fueling long-term growth for the company,” Bob Chapek, CEO of Disney said in a press release. “This is clearly reflected in the reopening of our theme parks and resorts, increased production at our studios, the continued success of our streaming services, and the expansion of our unrivaled portfolio of multiyear sports rights deals for ESPN and ESPN+.”
There’s no question that Disney has faced a tough year. While some of its competitors were able to lean on the strengths of their parent companies (both WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal are subsidiaries of AT&T and Comcast respectively, which saw broadband and mobile usage increase over the pandemic), Disney couldn’t. Two of the company’s top revenue drivers, Parks and Studios, took the biggest hit. Executives pointed to Disney+’s exponential growth as a highlight, and while there’s no question the speed of scaling is impressive, streaming isn’t yet a super profitable business.
Everything comes back to theme parks. In pre-pandemic times, the parks were Disney’s biggest revenue driver. By Disney’s third fiscal quarter in 2020 (ending in late June 2020), Disney saw its Parks revenue drop by 85 percent. Disney only recorded $983 million for the quarter compared to $6.58 billion the year before. By October 2020, as more people started to venture out to parks (including Disney World in Florida) albeit within a limited capacity, revenue grew slightly. Disney brought in $2.5 billion, but that was still a 61% drop from the year before, which saw $6.66 billion in revenue.
As of this quarter, Disney is seeing some return to life. The company recorded $3.2 billion in parks revenue. Still down from the same time period last year, but better than recent quarters.
For Disney executives, an increase is an increase. As vaccination rates continue to rise, and with new incentives for families and fans to visit parks (including Avengers Campus), executives are pointing toward the future for even stronger revenue growth. It may still be some time before Disney is hitting pre-pandemic numbers at its parks as capacity restrictions and general consumer hesitance is still in place, but as cases decline and as vaccination rates climb, Parks may once again become a big form of revenue.
Figuring out how to get more people into the parks comes back to what Disney does best — content. Jungle Cruise, for example, is a live-action movie starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt based on a theme park ride of the same name. Much like Pirates of the Caribbean, part of developing a film or series based on a theme park ride is encouraging fans to then purchase tickets to the park and enjoy said ride.
Content is king
On that note, Disney executives are going to have to answer questions about how they’re approaching theatrical exclusives versus hybrid releases. Just before today’s earnings, Dwayne Johnson confirmed Jungle Cruise would hit theaters and Disney+ as a Premier Access title (meaning it’ll cost subscribers an extra $30) on the same day. This is the same strategy Disney has used with Mulan, Raya and the Last Dragon, Cruella, and Black Widow.
Previously, CEO Bob Chapek referred to the decision to release some films through a hybrid distribution model as dependent on “what our slate of titles are and whether we think that we need to put something on the service for those particular guests or whether this is something that we could use as another data point in our exploration of Premier Access same date with theatrical.” Or, more simply, movies that Disney executives think people will pay for on Disney+ instead of using a “free” film to entice more subscribers to sign up, like Soul.
What does this mean for big tentpole titles down the road like Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings? The theatrical business is still crucial to Disney; arguably, it is the most crucial for Disney out of all the studios. Disney films are also the most crucial for theatrical exhibitors like AMC, making up more than 50% of all global box office revenue in 2019. How are executives thinking about streaming exclusives, hybrids, and theatrical only movies going forward?
This is especially true when the average revenue per user (ARPU) on the Disney+ side is $3.99, down from $5.63 the year before.
It’s not all doom and gloom. For the last year, Disney has proven its streaming strategy is working. More subscribers are being added every quarter, Disney has a robust line of new shows (including several from Marvel and Star Wars) hitting Disney+ throughout the year. Disney is also making deals to make ESPN+ and Hulu more appealing to customers, including bringing FX titles to Hulu and looking out for more sport leagues licensing opportunities to satiate cord cutters desires.
But if Disney+ growth is beginning to slow, there are questions that need to be answered. Executives just need to help analysts, investors, and fans understand how all of Disney’s various sections fit together together as life approaches some form of normalcy again. Hopefully, many of these questions will be answered during today’s call.
Housemarque says it’s heard the feedback from fans, but that implementing a save feature is easier said than done. “We understand that there are some systems in place that are currently a hindering factor,” Housemarque marketing director Mikael Havari told Axios today.
Havari’s comments dampen hopes of a solution that would enable players to quit without fear of losing their progress. While other roguelites like Hades includes a quicksave solution that retains the tension of permadeath, it’s clearly not so easy to implement such a feature in Returnal.
Other developers have sounded off on this subject. “I often see players exclaim how easy it is to add something, especially if other games have it,” Spelunky designer Derek Yu told Vice Games last week, “but every team and game has different priorities and nothing is really as trivial as it seems from the outside.”
As one of the first so-called “AAA roguelites,” Returnal stands out for its beautiful visuals, arcade mechanics, and storytelling features. While its progression revolves around discrete “chambers,” they tend to flow more smoothly than in other roguelites, where you pass through a door to enter the next room. This is in part because Roguelite is meant to highlight the lack of load times on the PS5. (https://www.ign.com/videos/how-returnal-shows-the-ps5s-power-performance-review)
Still, difficult as it is, Havari says Housemarque is looking for a solution. “But currently, we just don’t know exactly what it is. So it’s very difficult to announce anything, because I think there’s a lot of different people looking for different things.”
A paralyzed man is using his mind to create real-time sentences on a screen.
The man’s name is unknown, but he’s referred to as T5 by the team of researchers from Stanford University studying his brain and according to a CNN report, he’s able to write sentences on a screen in real-time by visualizing the movement required to write letters.
If he wants to write “yes,” he must visualize himself writing the y, the e, and the s. T5 was 65 years old when the study was performed and he was paralyzed from the neck down for nearly a decade after sustaining a spinal cord injury in 2007, according to CNN. The Stanford University team implanted two sensors into the left side of T5’s brain and asked him to imagine writing on paper with a pen.
The implanted sensors, which were comprised of 4-millimeter by 4-millimeter electrodes, then translated the brain activity happening as a result of T5 trying to imagine writing into words on a screen. It did all of this in real-time, too. According to CNN, T5 “was able to communicate by text at speeds rivaling those achieved by his able-bodied peers texting on a smartphone.”
More specifically, T5 was able write 18 words per minute, which is more than double the previous for someone typing with a brain interface like this, according to the team’s Nature journal published about the study, as noted by CNN. The team says that on average, an able-bodied person types about 23 words per minute on a smartphone.
Stanford professor, Jaimie Henderson, who is one of the people behind the study, told CNN that this “new development could be life changing for those who have suffered devastating injuries like brain stem stroke” and more.
The technology could allow anyone currently paralyzed to write using just their brain activity and while that’s exciting for a number of reasons, the team told CNN that there’s a lot of work to be done before this technology is available to the mass public. They said it will probably take years, but hopefully not decades, for that time to come.
