Author: Trafficblast

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This week on Wrestle Buddies, GameSpot’s professional wrestling podcast, Chris E. Hayner and Mat Elfring are revisiting a short-lived gimmick from the late ’90s that they love too much, and welcome AEW superstar Scorpio Sky and his new podcast co-host, Funhaus’s James Willems.

First, it’s a time warp back to 1998 for the introduction of Man’s Man Steven Regal. Yes, that’s the same person as proper British gentleman William Regal. At one point, he was repackaged as a tough guy that does manly activities like shaving outdoors, chopping wood, and squeezing fresh orange juice. That’s what was considered macho in WWE at the time, for one reason or another.

Next, we welcome AEW’s Scorpio Sky and Funhaus’s James Willems to talk about their new podcast, Wrestling with the Week. During their visit, all manner of topics are discussed, from what video games everyone is playing to Sky’s love of the reality TV show 90 Day Fiance–a show Mat also happens to be obsessed with.

All that, plus we answer your questions. New episodes of Wrestle Buddies are released every Thursday on the podcast platform or app of your choice, including Spotify, Stitcher, and Apple Podcasts. You can also keep up to date with the podcast by following it on Twitter.

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After a massive year of acquisitions and investments in 2020, the Chinese internet company Tencent has bought another prominent game studio.

It was confirmed on Friday that Tencent has acquired Klei, the developers of Shank and Don’t Starve. Klei confirmed the buyout in a post on its forums.

“I want to take a moment to announce that we have agreed to deal for Tencent to purchase a majority stake in Klei Entertainment,” the studio said. “As part of this agreement, Klei retains full autonomy of creative and operations across all aspects of the studio, including projects, talent, and more.”

As for what will change, founder Jamie Cheng said he will continue to run the studio and there will be no changes to staffing, projects, and operations, though there will be some “boring accounting changes.”

Cheng said he accepted the buyout so he and his team wouldn’t have to worry about finding new projects and publishers to keep the lights on.

“My wish has been to enable people to do their best creative work, to learn and grow, to not have to worry about finances, and be able to enjoy their lives outside the studio. This has not changed,” he said. “This partnership helps us navigate a changing industry, and helps us focus on what we do best: making unique experiences that no one else can.”

Klei and Tencent had actually been working together already, as Tencent partnered with the studio to launch Don’t Starve Together in China on Tencent’s WeGame platform. Klei and Tencent are also working together on Don’t Starve: Newhome for mobile.

Cheng said Klei is happy to sign with Tencent because the company will allow the studio to “retain the level of control that we demand.”

“We’ve been working with Tencent for years and even at points where we disagreed, they were always willing to work with us to find the best solution for everybody involved and defer to us when we felt strongly,” Cheng said.

A report from Niko Partners showed that Tencent made 31 deals in 2020 related to investments in the games industry, which is three times as many deals as it did in 2019. Its biggest deal was the $1.5 billion buyout of Leyou, the parent company of Warframe developer Digital Extremes.

Some of Tencent’s other moves in 2020 included investing in–but not buying outright–the Japanese studio Platinum Games. Tencent also acquired Conan developer Funcom and bought the GTFO studio 10 Chambers.

Tencent now owns or has invested in a great number of gaming companies. It owns Riot (League of Legends), Grinding Gear Games (Path of Exile), and Supercell (Clash of Clans), while Tencent also owns a piece of Fortnite studio Epic Games. Tencent also has minority investments in Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard, and Bluehole.

Between December 21-27, the top streamed piece of content in the United States was none other than Pixar’s Soul–which was released on December 25 on Disney+. Also making that week’s Top 10 are Bridgerton, The Office, and The Mandalorian.

The Nielsen streaming ratings state that 1.6 billion minutes were viewed for Soul, and while this is for the week of December 21, Soul premiered on Disney+ on December 25, so these numbers account for only three days. The only other Disney+ content that landed on the top 10 was The Mandalorian, as Season 2 came to a close on December 18. Check out the full top 10 list below.

While Wonder Woman 1984 debuted on HBO Max on Christmas as well, the Nielsen ratings do not take into account viewership for that streaming service. In fact, this list only covers Amazon Prime, Disney+, Hulu, and Netflix. Content from HBO Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, and the various other streaming services are not included in the Nielsen ratings.

Taking second place on the list was none other than The Office, which made the jump over to NBCUniversal’s Peacock on January 1 and exiting Netflix that same day. However, the service’s newest original series Bridgerton took the third place spot. Netflix recently boasted that in the first four weeks, the series was seen by 63 million households–keep in mind that watching two minutes of anything on the service counts as a view. Because of its success, Bridgerton has been renewed for a season season.

Because of the popularity of Netflix, along with the amount of content it pushes out on a weekly basis, it should dominate the top 10 for quite some time. However, with The Office’s move to Peacock and Warner Bros. premiering movies on HBO Max, the landscape for streaming dominance will be a vastly different landscape in 2021.

For more info on upcoming releases on various streaming services, check out the February release lists for Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, and Shudder.

The third movie in the Kingsman franchise, The King’s Man, has been bumped from a March 12 release date to August 20 this year. The move was reported by The Hollywood Reporter, and this film alone is one of many that has had multiple delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic–when it was first announced in 2020, it was expected in theaters September 18 of that year.

Despite being the third movie, it’s actually a prequel set decades before the first two movies in the Kingsman series, and as such, it doesn’t feature star Taron Egerton. It explores the origins of the franchise’s secretive spy organization. Check out the film’s official trailer below.

While the film’s cast doesn’t include Egerton, that’s more than made up for in the star power provided by Ralph Fiennes, Daniel Brühl, Gemma Arterton, Rhys Ifans, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Matthew Goode, and Stanley Tucci. Meanwhile, director Matthew Vaughn will be returning to helm the prequel.

In the same announcement, Disney also indicated that its 20th Century Studios release of the Bob’s Burgers movie has been changed from an April 9 release date to being unset–but have no fear, as The King’s Man once also was reclassified in this manner. We have also seen movies during the pandemic be the opposite of delayed–the recent divisive Monster Hunter movie is one such example of a film having its release date actually moved up.

That’s definitely something to keep in mind and maybe hope for given the avalanche of movie delays that were announced recently, including Morbius, plus the Uncharted movie and Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

After making the difficult decision to temporarily close all Stone Theatres locations due to COVID-19, the North and South Carolina cinema chain has reportedly converted its theaters to vaccine sites according to Variety. For an industry that was forced to get creative due to the pandemic restristrictions (including AMC allowing small groups to rent out theaters), this is a nice symbolic shift that hopefully can help us move along to the next chapter of the coronavirus.

“This allowed us to go from administering a few hundred vaccines a day to about 1,300 a day,” Carolyn Fisher, New Hanover Regional Medical Center’s director of marketing told Variety.

Theater operator Dale Coleman called this arrangement “the perfect situation” because the chain has been empty for months and they have “plenty of parking and a huge lobby.” Local residents make staggered appointments, check in at the box office (which now hands out medical forms instead of selling tickets), and get their vaccine shot. Coleman said transforming his theater into a vaccine site was “fairly easy to accomplish.”

The move has generated good will among the industry and philanthropic organizations–John Fithian, the president of NATO, told Variety that the organization applauds his spirit of public service and noted that “the sooner the vaccines are made widely available, the sooner communities across the country, and the movie theaters that serve them can return to normal life.”

Meanwhile, Warner Bros.’s recent announcement and shift to putting its entire theatrical line-up for 2021 up on a streaming service is still causing tension across these very same industries. Negotiations to make things right with parties who were not consulted about the move (including million-dollar bonuses for stars) are ongoing, and the overall role for theatrical releases for new films is still being negotiated.

The CW has released a more in-depth trailer for the up-and-coming series Superman & Lois, which debuts on February 23. And if the new video is any indication, it will be super-emotional.

Although the newly released season trailer for The CW’s Superman & Lois series is barely more than a minute long, chances are pretty good within its minute and 10-second runtime you’ll instantly be able to tell if the show is for you. For example, in a voiceover, Lois Lane talks about millennials losing jobs and “teens with severe anxiety” and a young, moody Clark Kent (or Jon Kent?) at a garden party groans to himself that he “really wishes he could get drunk sometimes.” Who knows if the series will be this tongue-in-cheek but this trailer definitely has a mood it’s going for.

This overall vibe was not present in a trailer released last month, but that clip was meant to showcase the look of Superman’s suit. (New stills were released just before that clip.) But ever since the show was first ordered in January 2020, it’s been made clear that the show was intended to be and bring something different to the canon–an emphasis on family and the sacrifices being a superhero would really require. The family dynamic is likely to be fairly complicated, as the show will feature an expanded role for Jon Kent–Clark and Lois’ son Jon, who was introduced in the comics several years ago and eventually took over the Superboy mantle. Jon was introduced in live-action as a baby during the Crisis On Infinite Earths event.

Developed by Todd Helbing (The Flash) and Greg Berlanti (Dawson’s Creek), Superman & Lois stars Tyler Hoechlin (The Flash), Elizabeth Tulloch (The Flash), Emmanuelle Chriqui (Entourage), and Wolé Parks (The Vampire Diaries).

The February 23 debut date now means this show will premiere before Supergirl’s sixth and final season, which is now expected is scheduled to air sometime later this year.

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One of Australia’s most notable game developers has been sold to Nacon, a French video game accessories company that also publishes games.

Nacon is buying Big Ant Studios, the developers of various rugby, cricket, and tennis games, for a maximum price of €35 million, with a guarantee of €15M at the time the ink hits the paper. Big Ant might get even more money if it reaches certain performance targets through 2024, Nacon said in its announcement.

The deal is expected to officially close in February, pending final conditions.

Nacon said the acquisition of Big Ant not only gives the publisher a number of new IP assets but also Big Ant’s “remarkable know-how” in the world of games. Nacon also gets a foothold in the Asia-Pacific region with its buyout of Big Ant, the company said. Before this, Nacon primarily targeted the European market.

Big Ant founder and CEO, Ross Symons, will remain the head of Big Ant and Nacon promises that the Australian studio will have a “high degree of autonomy” following the sale. Big Ant will focus on the creative side while Nacon will provide its sales and marketing support.

Big Ant was founded in 2001 and as such, it is one of the oldest continually operating game studios in the whole of Australia.

Nacon said Big Ant’s cricket video games are of particular interest to the company. Cricket is said to be among the most popular sports across the whole world and Big Ant has a corner on the market with its Don Bradman Cricket series.

“This acquisition represents a significant step in Nacon’s strategy,” CEO Alain Falc said in a statement. “It significantly strengthens our ability to create new sports games that match our ambitions in the AA segment. Through this transaction, we intend to become the world’s leading player in rugby, tennis and cricket. Nacon is also proud to welcome the talents of Big Ant, one of the most creative studios in the industry, and we will support its growth on new, even more ambitious projects.”

As for Big Ant, Symons said his company is “delighted” to join Nacon, which he says will give his teams a “unique opportunity to significant increase our production resources…”