Author: Trafficblast

Searchlight Television has struck a deal with streaming giant Hulu for a limited, 6-10 episode series starring Saturday Night Live star Kate McKinnon. According to Deadline, the project is titled The Dropout, a limited series centered around the tumultuous career of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. The Dropout will use the podcast of the same name, launched in late January, as the basis for its context.

Theranos, founded in 2003, was a Palo Alto-based technology company specializing in blood tests before going under in September 2018 for wire fraud and conspiracy. Specifically, Theranos was accused of distributing blood tests with counterfeit results to consumers. Holmes–and the company’s former COO and President, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani–pled not guilty to nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and could face up to 20 years in prison.

McKinnon is set to play the disgraced Holmes and will serve as The Dropout’s executive producer. ABC News’s Rebecca Jarvis will also executive produce The Dropout alongside McKinnon. Additionally, Taylor Dunn and Victoria Thompson–who produce The Dropout podcast, hosted by Jarvis–will produce The Dropout limited series.

There’s no word on when the series will film, who else will star in the series, or when the series will launch.

Mortal Kombat 11 is just a couple of weeks away, marking the latest entry in NetherRealm’s signature fighting franchise. The studio has dabbled in other franchises like Injustice but is most closely identified with MK–NetherRealm’s name and logo are even explicit references to the series. But creative director and franchise co-creator Ed Boon says he’d like to see the studio branch out.

“I think our studio has a number of good games in it that are completely unrelated to Mortal Kombat,” Boon told Game Informer. “While we love making Mortal Kombat games, we would love to expand into other genres, other IP, other things like that, for sure.”

Boon also suggested that the success of Mortal Kombat X is one major reason the studio hasn’t moved on to another one of those ideas it has stored away. MKX notably sold 11 million copies, making it NetherRealm’s best-selling game.

“One of the challenges of having your last game sell the most of any other game, is … it’s hard to just stop from there and say we’re done,” he said. “But certainly we could take a break from it and build up anticipation for a future title.”

Mortal Kombat 11 is the third game in a refreshed series that began with MK9, which was packaged as simply Mortal Kombat. It was treated as a soft reboot of the series, and retold some of the same story beats from the original games. MK11, by comparison, is paying homage to the series’ long legacy with a time travel plot that brings in alternate timelines and paradoxical variations on several characters. It’s been implied that this game treats the entire series as canonical, including those that came before MK9, thanks to the existence of multiple universes.

It also uses the time travel element to introduce various cosmetic changes for characters, but Boon has ruled out the use of loot boxes. This is also the first main Mortal Kombat since the reboot to appear on Nintendo Switch, which appears to work surprisingly well. For more on Mortal Kombat 11, check out the full character roster so far and consult our preorder guide.

From Software’s latest game, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, looks to be a hit. Publisher Activision has shared sales figures for the title so far, revealing that Sekiro has already sold over two million copies.

According to a post on Activision’s official website, Sekiro sold two million copies across all platforms–PC, PS4, and Xbox One–in just 10 days. As the announcement highlights, the game holds a 90+ Metacritic review score average across all platforms.

The post further reveals that Sekiro was “the #1 viewed game on Twitch, [with] more than 631 million minutes watched [during] launch weekend.” From there, it went to be viewed for over 1.1 billion minutes in one week.

Activision’s VP of Product Management and Marketing, Michelle Fonseca, made note of the fans’ enthusiasm for these impressive sales figures. “The fans have made Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice one of the most incredible game launches of 2019 thus far,” Fonseca said. “The game has performed well on all platforms including PC and we’re excited by the continued support from gamers and critics alike. It has been gratifying to see the enjoyment from fans when they overcome each challenge.”

In our Sekiro review, we said the game “marries the developer’s unique brand of gameplay with stealth action to deliver an experience that is as challenging as it is gratifying.”

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Fortnite‘s 8.30 update is now live across PS4, Xbox One, PC, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices. Not only did this week’s patch introduce Reboot Vans to the battle royale game, it also marked the start of a new limited-time event called Buccaneer’s Bounty, which features its own unique set of challenges and rewards.

Buccaneer’s Bounty runs until April 15. Each day of the event, Epic is featuring a different limited-time mode, and there will be a new challenge to complete and cosmetic reward to unlock. If you manage to complete all four of the Buccaneer’s Bounty challenges before the event ends, you’ll also earn a special reward: an Epic-tier emote.

The first Buccaneer’s Bounty challenge is fairly straightforward: visit a Pirate Camp in different matches. You’ll need to travel to 10 of these camps to complete the mission. Fortunately, the Pirate Camps are always located in the same spots, so with a little persistence you should be able to complete this challenge without too much difficulty. Be sure to check out our Pirate Camp location guide if you need help finding them.

The second challenge is likewise self-explanatory: search one Buried Treasure. Once that’s completed, you’ll unlock a special Pirate Parrot spray. You can see all of the Buccaneer’s Bounty challenges so far below. We’ll continue to update this list as new challenges are unlocked each day of the event.

Fortnite Buccaneer’s Bounty Challenges

1. Visit a Pirate Camp in different matches (10) — Plunder glider
2. Search Buried Treasure (1) — Pirate Parrot spray
3. TBD
4. TBD

In addition to the Buccaneer’s Bounty challenges, Week 7’s challenges are also now live. This week’s tasks run the gamut from visiting three Pirate Camps in a single match to eliminating opponents in named locations and searching chests at Loot Lake or Snobby Shores. Once those are completed, you’ll be another step closer to unlocking the Legendary Ruin skin in Week 8.

Square Enix announced Octopath Traveler–previously a Nintendo Switch exclusive–is coming to PC on June 7. The game will launch via Steam and be available to buy through Valve’s PC game store or the Square Enix Store.

According to Gematsu, the announcement was made via a now-deleted blog post. The post didn’t mention any changes coming to Octopath Traveler, so it seems to be a straight port to PC. Square Enix has not followed up with an announcement concerning the Octopath Traveller PC port since deleting the blog post.

In our Octopath Traveler review, Peter Brown gave the game an 8/10, writing, “Despite the lackluster stories that pull you through the world, Octopath thrives on its character progression and the temptations of high-level challenges and rewards. The promise of new jobs, exciting boss fights, and powerful gear will inspire you to poke around every corner, and there are no shortage of discoveries to strive for. And all the while, you’re treated to one of the most interesting and effective re-imaginings of a retro aesthetic around. Octopath will likely be a divisive game due to its fractured storytelling, but it’s one worth playing despite its lesser qualities. Its high points are simply too good to ignore.”

Octopath Traveler is an RPG that puts you in the shoes of eight different heroes, each of which possess their own abilities and stories. H’annit, a hunter, for example, can tame animals and is in search of her missing master, while the knight Olberic can challenge NPCs to fights and is seeking redemption for his past actions. You begin the game as one of the eight, and then recruit the other seven in whichever order you choose.

A mobile game prequel, titled Octopath Traveler: Conquerors of the Continent, is in the works. Square Enix has said it plans on making more games like Octopath Traveler in the future, as sales for the RPG exceeded expectations.

While it may be the last film of the current X-Men movie franchise, Dark Phoenix is also shaping up to be the absolute darkest chapter of the series yet. What’s worse, it could be something the mutant superheroes will never recover from. The following contains spoilers for Dark Phoenix.

Already in the latest trailer for the movie–and cast interviews that followed–it has been revealed that this movie will see the death of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) at the hands of a Phoenix Force-powered Jean Grey (Sophie Turner). As shown in clips from the movie screened for fans at WonderCon, this event drives a wedge between the X-Men, leading to Beast (Nicholas Hoult) quitting the team and siding with Magneto (Michael Fassbender).

With the X-Men’s family dynamic in shambles, Turner mentioned a very interesting touchstone for the story’s inspiration. “One of the things we kind of looked at as a reference was addiction and how that can affect, you know, not only the person who’s struggling with it but the people around them and the family unit and the friends,” she said during a group interview at WonderCon. “And that’s kind of what happens to the X-Men–some people, you know, they can’t handle [Jean Grey], they don’t understand her, so they abandoned her. And others, you know, seek to kind of find the Jean that they knew before all of this. It’s very real, and I think it will resonate with a lot of people.”

As for who will be the threat trying to keep the X-Men together, it may come from a surprising place. While you might expect Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) to be the voice of reason, it could end up falling on Storm’s (Alexandra Shipp) shoulders. “I think that what you’ll see with Storm is that she’s not afraid to speak her mind and she’s really trying to keep everyone together,” the actress teased. “She’s still that person who’s trying to keep everyone together.”

If the WonderCon footage is an indication, though, any hope of that might be lost. In one clip, Beast and Magneto are determined to kill Jean, while others on the team are convinced she can still be saved. What follows is a brutal war between mutants in New York City that sees them unleashing their powers against each other.

Whether the team, and Jean herself, can be saved remains to be seen. With no announced continuation of the franchise announced, beyond New Mutants, this could be the last dance for the X-Men as fans of the movies know them. As director Simon Kinberg previously explained, he does believe Dark Phoenix gives some level of closure to the franchise.

You’ll have to wait until Dark Phoenix hits theaters on June 7 to find out whether that closure is a happy ending.

While the DC show Titans isn’t a Batman show and Bruce Wayne was only glimpsed occasionally, the shadow of the Dark Knight fell across the first season. Season 2 is set to premiere later this year and it looks like Wayne will play much bigger part. It has been announced that Game of Thrones star Iain Glen will play this iconic role.

As reported by Deadline, Glen will portray an older version of Wayne, who has been fighting crime as Batman for decades. Glen is best known for his role as Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones–he has appeared in every season of HBO’s fantasy hit and returns for the final Season 8 this month. He has also appeared in movies such as Kick Ass 2, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and three entries in the Resident Evil series.

It is unknown whether we’ll actually see Bruce Wayne as Batman, but the official character synopsis gives us some idea of what to expect. It reads: “After decades of fighting crime as Batman, billionaire Bruce Wayne is just as driven to protect Gotham from evil as he was in his prime. Needing to reconcile his relationship with Dick Grayson, the duo hope to forge a new dynamic as Bruce tries to help his former sidekick and the Titans achieve success.”

Titans Season 2 will be released on the subscription service DC Universe, and is scheduled to arrive in the Fall. The main cast members from Season 1 are expected to return, namely Brenton Thwaites (Robin), Anna Diop (Starfire), Teagan Croft (Raven), and Ryan Potter (Beast Boy). In addition Esai Morales was recently cast as the villainous Deathstroke, and we’ll see more of Joshua Orpin was cast as Superboy, who appeared briefly at the end of Season 1.

The DC Universe panel at Wondercon last month gave fans an idea of what else to expect from the service. There was a first look at Courtney Whitmore in Stargirl, which will premiere in early 2020. There was also a preview of the horror-themed Swamp Thing, which arrives in May, plus the second half the animated series Young Justice: Outsiders.