The classic novel series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is reportedly being adapted into a series for Hulu. THR reports that the series will be headed up by Carlton Cuse (Lost, Jack Ryan) and Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman). The two will write and executive produce the project.
The show is said to be under the umbrella of ABC Signature, the ABC division that focuses on streaming shows. Disney is also the majority owner of Hulu, and owns the rights to Hitchhiker’s Guide. Cuse has an overall deal with ABC as well.
The HGTTG series of novels from Douglas Adams follows Arthur Dent, a down-on-his-luck British man who goes on a space-hopping adventure after Earth is destroyed to make space for an intergalactic highway. The series is known for its dry wit, with equal parts satirical and absurdist humor. It was previously adapted into a movie in 2005 starring Martin Freeman, Mos Def, and Zooey Deschanel.
Hulu has gained critical attention in recent years for The Handmaid’s Tale. While Disney is the majority owner, it offers a mix of original programming and selections from network and cable TV. Disney’s own streaming service, Disney+, is scheduled to launch this fall for $7 per month.
The MCU likes to play fast and loose with its villains. From total reinventions to visual overhauls, the last ten years have been a testing ground for Marvel Studios to really push their source material to its absolute limits–and sometimes far beyond–in service of making a compelling film that stands alone for fans who haven’t buried themselves in the last six decades of published comics history. Most of the time, that works perfectly fine–Marvels’ reinventions have given us some truly fascinating bad guy takes, from Hela, recreated to be Thor’s long lost sister, to Vulture, pivoted from hand-wringing evildoer to complicated, down on his luck father.
Other times, the major changes can leave something to be desired. This was, unfortunately, the case with Captain America: Civil War’s Helmut Zemo–expertly played by Daniel Brühl, but almost entirely unrecognizable when stood next to his comic book counterpart. Live-action Zemo was a vengeful Sokovian soldier whose vendetta was less specific to any one Avenger personally, and more just a scattershot across the entire superhero community. He worked in the story, sure, but in terms of memorable onscreen villains, he didn’t really register, especially not in the shadow of the movie’s real conflict, the knock-down-drag-out brawl between Captain America and Iron Man.
But luckily, as we learned through the news out of San Diego Comic-Con and the new Disney+ streaming service are giving us a second pass at Zemo complete with a new look, care of the Falcon & The Winter Soldier miniseries, which means we might actually get to see a live-action translation of one of the greatest hero-villain rivalries in comics history.
The Real Zemo Story
Like oh so many parts of the Captain America pantheon, Zemo’s story actually begins back in World War II–sort of, at least. The Zemo family was an invention of the 1960s, swooping into the mix after Steve Rogers had been revived for the modern Marvel era, but the introduction included a little fancy footwork to retroactively place them throughout history. Heinrich Zemo, Helmut’s father, was eventually revealed to be one of Cap’s greatest foes throughout the war, and the villain responsible for the exploding plane trap that killed Bucky Barnes and sent Steve Rogers into the Atlantic ocean where he was frozen for years.
Once he was revived, Steve didn’t take too kindly to the fact that Heinrich had killed his sidekick, and he set out for revenge. During a confrontation, Heinrich fired a laser gun which Steve deflected with his shield, hitting the terrain behind Heinrich and triggering an avalanche which killed him. This was the late ’60s and the whole “no killing” rule for superheroes hadn’t really set in yet, so Steve was mostly just excited about this development, believing justice to have finally been served.
Fast forward several years for the surprise reveal that Heinrich had a son, Helmut, who popped up to blame Captain America for the death of his father, and you’ve got a recipe for a serious grudge match.
For years, that was essentially the most important thing to know about Helmut. He blamed Captain America for his father’s death and he’d do basically anything to try and get his revenge–even if it ultimately meant driving himself more and more insane. Through the years, Zemo ping-ponged around from raving lunatic to begrudging anti-hero and leader of “reformed” villain teams like the Thunderbolts–but, regardless of where he fell on the morality spectrum, he never really rose past b- or c-list side character.
At least, until Bucky Barnes came back.
The rivalry to end all rivalries
Bucky Barnes’ surprise resurrection as The Winter Soldier was not something fans saw coming. In fact, there used to be a cliche shared among readers that the only permanent superhero deaths were Jason Todd, Bucky Barnes, and Uncle Ben.
Obviously, only one of those things is still true today–but the sentiment was very much still alive when Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting launched into their early 2000s story arc revolving around the surprise reveal that not only had Bucky Barnes survived the plane explosion trap set by Heinrich Zemo back in the ’40s, he’d been brainwashed and used by the Soviet spy cell known as The Red Room for the past six-odd decades as an assassin.
Naturally, this revelation had a pretty major effect on Steve, but it also wound up getting back to poor Helmut, who, as a traditionally less-than-stable chaotic element in the Marvel Universe, did not handle the news very well. Unlike the MCU’s version of events, Steve was killed shortly after the Winter Soldier revelation, leaving a magically recovered Bucky (all his memories were returned thanks to Steve wishing on the Tesseract–don’t worry too much about it) to take over as Captain America in the meantime.
At first, this was a relatively secret development–no one really know Bucky Barnes had come back from the dead, and even fewer knew that he had picked up the shield–but the villains were the first to key into the fact that something was definitely strange. You know, like when they suddenly found themselves fighting a Captain America who had no qualms about stabbing them with trench knives.
When word got to Zemo, things took a sharp turn for his mental state. All those feelings about his father’s legacy and death at the hands of Steve Rogers all those years ago came roaring back with newly honed focus. Bucky Barnes was alive. Heinrich’s death trap had been a failure. The Zemo legacy had been tarnished. But what’s more, there was the fact that Bucky Barnes had been forgiven by his teammates and friends, despite his actions as the brainwashed Winter Soldier. He was embraced by the superhero community and the public, something that Helmut himself had never accomplished despite his years of on-again-off-again anti-heroism and team leadership.
This combination of major revelations was enough to drive Zemo right off the edge with his crosshairs firmly trained on Bucky; the spark in the powder keg of one of Marvel’s greatest and most under-appreciated grudge matches.
Blood feuds
Zemo took a new approach when he set out to ruin Bucky Barnes. There were no big villain monologues or threats of world destruction. Instead, he opted for the personal route–he didn’t need Bucky dead, at least not yet; he needed him thoroughly destroyed in every way that could matter. This process involved a months-long conspiracy where Zemo strategically gaslit, mind-controlled, or otherwise manipulated Bucky into dangerous public situations while strategically leaking sealed documents that linked Bucky back to the Winter Soldier’s crimes.
Public opinion of the new Captain America took an almost immediate turn for the worst. While Zemo himself continued to physically and mentally torture Bucky–even forcing him to re-live his own death in real-time–the US government began moving to try the Winter Soldier for war crimes and treason, of which he was found guilty and sent to Russia to be imprisoned in a gulag–at least, for a little while. There was a whole Fight Club situation involving genetically modified bears and a murderer’s row of vintage villains. It was awesome. But naturally, it was also temporary.
Zemo and Bucky’s burning resentment, however, was anything but.
In recent years, their hatred for one another has manifested in a few unusual ways. For a time, Bucky took over as leader of the Thunderbolts, a team that Zemo himself used to command (unsurprisingly, Zemo wasn’t too enthusiastic about this sudden change in management). Around the same time, Steve Rogers’ history was cosmically re-written (after he was resurrected, of course) to the point where he believed that he and Helmut, rather than he and Bucky, had been friends and partners through the 1940s. This gave Helmut yet another opportunity to really stick it to Bucky and force him to go through the whole plane-death-trap scenario yet again–you know, just for good measure. The whole plan really revolved around hitting Bucky as close to home as possible, because world domination and evil plans are completely secondary to Zemo’s burning need to just completely screw this guy over as hard as possible.
That’s really biggest and most important takeaway from Bucky and Helmut’s constant conflicts: They’re always deeply, deeply personal. These are two characters who hate each other not because of their ideals or their respective moral codes–there’s no real “I’m right and you’re wrong” hero/villain back-and-forth, and they don’t have a Batman-and-the-Joker “we’re two sides of the same coin” thing going on. They just hate each other.
And with any luck, we’ll finally start to see that hatred start to come to the surface in the Disney+ TV show. After all, not only is Zemo getting a more comics-inspired look, he has plenty of reason following Civil War to resent everything Bucky stands for. After all, Zemo’s grand plan to dismantle the Avengers not only failed, it brought his ace-in-the-hole, the brainwashed assassin, even further into the fold.
There’s More Lore Packed In Here Than You Might Think
The Witcher is getting an all-new live-action adaptation from Netflix, and the first trailer dropped at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con. While The Witcher is mostly known in the West for its critically acclaimed games from developer CD Projekt Red, they’re based on a popular Polish book series that began in the ’80s.
The upcoming TV show, in particular, is based on The Last Wish, which is the first collection of short stories preceding the main Witcher books. Showrunner and executive producer Lauren Hissrich stated she read The Last Wish and Netflix asked her to adapt it. For fans of the series, this is fantastic news, as The Last Wish is incredible.
The new trailer had plenty of interesting tidbits and references, including glimpses of iconic moments, events, characters, and more. We’ve compiled everything we noticed in the feature below. If you haven’t watched seen the debut footage, be sure to watch Netflix’s The Witcher trailer before you read this feature. Otherwise, keep scrolling below to see our trailer breakdown or watch the video version in the embed above.
Was there anything you caught that we missed? And how excited are you for Netflix’s adaptation of the classic book series? Let us know in the comments below.
Prolific action stars Jackie Chan and Arnold Schwarzenegger will stand side-by-side on the big screen. Though the two are attached, this isn’t a Rush Hour-Terminator crossover. Instead, The Mystery of the Dragon Seal: Journey to China is a fantasy movie that finally, after a few hiccups, has a release date–but only in China and Russia for now.
The Hollywood Reporter confirms the movie is headed to both China and Russia on August 16. While it wrapped up production in 2017 and sat in postproduction hell for a couple of years, Journey to China will finally make its way to theatres. Unfortunately, there’s no confirmation on when or if the fantasy movie will debut in other regions.
According to the THR story, Journey to China will feature “wizards, princesses, martial arts masters, and ‘the king of all dragons,'” with Chan and Schwarzenegger playing a master wizard and an imposing sea captain, respectively. The movie also stars Charles Dance (Ghostbusters), Christopher Fairbank (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1), Igor Jijikine (Forbidden Empire), and Martin Klebba (Jurassic World). Blade Runner star Rutger Hauer, who recently passed away, also appears in the movie.
Directed by Russian filmmaker Oleg Stepchenko, Journey to China is a sequel to his 2014 movie Forbidden Empire, a loose adaptation of a horror novella by a Russian writer named Nikolai Gogol. Journey to China sees British actor Jason Flemyng (X-Men: First Class) tasked with mapping the Russian Far East. Flemyng, who starred in Forbidden Empire, reprises his role as an 18th-century English explorer who travels east and encounters a plethora of dark mysteries along the way.
Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled has stormed back into first place in the UK all-format physical sales charts, according to sales monitor Chart-Track. The remastered kart racer gets a little help from Amazon’s Prime Day to beat Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, though it should be noted the latter is a Switch exclusive while the former is also available on PS4 and Xbox One, so has a larger potential install base.
As a result of those two games’ strong chart performance, last week’s No.1, Super Mario Maker 2, drops to No.3 for the week ending July 20. Elsewhere, Chart-Track says Prime Day helped 34 of the top 40 games register an increase in sales over last week, with FIFA 19 (No.4), Red Dead Redemption 2 (No.5), and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (No.7) the main beneficiaries.
The new Marvel game fared well in our review; critic Richard Wakeling awarded it an 8/10. “More so than its predecessors, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order excels because of its character diversity and the ways its disparate heroes work together,” he wrote. “For this reason alone it’s an ideal co-op game, whether you’re playing with another friend in the same room or with three friends online, but the AI more than holds its own if you’re playing alone, too. It falters in places, but there’s still nothing quite like the Ultimate Alliance series, and this long-awaited third entry makes it a triumphant return for a superhero brawler that feels more relevant than ever.” Read more in our full Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order review.
You can read the full top 10 sales chart for this week below, courtesy of UKIE and GfK Chart-Track. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.
Sony’s US PlayStation Store summer sale went live just recently, and now the company’s European and Australian divisions have followed suit. There’s up to 60% off some big PS4 games in the sale, which is called the Summer Sale in Europe and the Winter Sale in Australia.
Spider-Man, for example, is currently down to £25 / $40 AU, which is convenient timing given the recent release of the new Spider-Man film, Far from Home. God of War‘s deluxe edition is the same price, while another PS4 exclusive, Days Gone, is down to £40 / $63 AU.
Rockstar’s big hitters have also seen their prices slashed. You can grab Red Dead Redemption 2 for £35 / $55 AU or Grand Theft Auto V‘s premium edition for £13 / $18 AU. And if you’re a sports fan, there are a few bargains to be found, like FIFA 19 at £16.79 / $28 AU or NBA 2K19 for £16 / $31 AU.
You can take a look at the full list of games on sale on the PlayStation Store. The promotion ends August 21, though Sony warns some titles will leave the sale before that date. On the other hand, new titles will be added on August 7.
At their Comic Con 2019 panel, Marvel Studios announced Phase Four of their Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, including the cast members who will be bringing these new heroes to life.
Here are the new faces of the MCU’s Phase Four.
Marvel Phase 4 Comic Con Panel
First up on the docket was the cast of Marvel’s Eternals, including Angelina Jolie (as Thena), Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden (Ikaris), Salma Hayek (Ajak), Kumail Nanjiani (Kingo), Brian Tyree Henry (Phastos), Lia McHugh (Sprite), Laruen Ridloff (Makkari), and Don Lee (Gilgamesh).
Next up was Simu Liu, who will be playing Shang-Chi in a new film focused on the Asian superhero. Liu will be joined in the film by Tony Leung (who will play the real Mandarin) and Awkwafina.
Jeffrey Wright will voice The Watcher, a wildly powerful extraterrestrial being, in the Disney+ animated series What If…?, which will see a slew of MCU vets reprise their roles in animated form.
She joins returning stars Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Love and Thunder.
For the upcoming Black Widow movie, Scarlett Johansson is being joined by David Harbour (as Red Guardian) and actress Florence Pugh (as Yelena), O.T. Fagbenle, and Rachel Weisz (as Melina).
Paul Bettany and Elizabeth Olson are returning for a new series titled WandaVision, where they will be joined by Teyonah Parris in the role of the adult Monica Rambeau.
Make sure to check out everything we saw at Marvel’s panel at Comic Con 2019, as well as our interview with Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige. Plus, read why Marvel chose to go with Mahershala Ali as their new Blade.
universe was adapted into a live-action film starring the likes of Mark Wahlberg, Mila Kunis, and rapper Ludacris. It was, to put it mildly, received by fans with as much warmth as one of Max Payne’s many headshot victims. IGN called it “humdrum,” with not one memorable action sequence. Don’t blame anyone working at game studio Remedy Entertainment, though. On this month’s episode of IGN Unfiltered, famed Max Payne 1 and 2 writer Sam Lake, who says Remedy wasn’t “involved in any way,” says he felt “detached” from the making of the film.“I was quite detached,” Lake told IGN. “[But] I was happy that there was a movie at that point. I think that was worth celebrating.”
Lake cited the differences between video game and film storytelling as one of the primary reasons he believes the Max Payne film flopped. He noted that the Max Payne games are themselves a video game tribute to noir films, creating a sort of twisted cycle to films influencing a game that then influence a film.
“The interesting thing to me is: What’s there because it’s a game and needed for the game?” Lake said. “What is the heart of this thing that should be carried over? But then how do we make it in this different medium to stand out on its own? That is an interesting question, and maybe that thought process didn’t go into making the Payne movie.”
You can hear Lake discuss more of the impact of Max Payne on Remedy and the video game industry, his desire to return to the Alan Wake franchise, and his own history as a legendary video game writer on this month’s full episode of IGN Unfiltered. Lake also discusses what it’s been like to write for Remedy’s upcoming game, Control.
Control E3 2019 Screenshots
IGN Unfiltered is a monthly interview show that focuses on exploring the lives and careers of video games’ biggest developers, actors, and leaders. Recent guests include Bethesda director Todd Howard, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, and Uncharted series writer and co-director Amy Hennig. You can find every episode here.
Joseph Knoop is a writer and producer for IGN, and he can’t believe that movie is only a decade old. Fly through the air with him on Twitter.
