Author: Trafficblast

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.

A UK man is going to jail for stealing £36,935 ($48,000 USD) worth of Harry Potter merchandise and selling it on the popular auction site eBay. 35-year-old Adam Hill, who is a former Warner Bros. Studios employee, was charged with stealing all manner of items from the film company’s stock room, including wands, badges, and key rings. The thefts took place between December 2017 and March 2018, according to a news release from local authorities.

Hill is said to have sold the items through his personal eBay account, and on occasion he used the Warner Bros. franking machine to send the items from within the Warner Bros. mail room.

The report goes on to highlight how brazen Hill was in his thefts. The release says Hill got caught when his colleagues took notice of Harry Potter merch appearing and then vanishing from under Hill’s desk.

In total, Hill is said to have sold 1,040 Harry potter items on eBay. Authorities searched his car and found 12 further items that Hill reportedly planned to sell. A search of Hill’s home in St Neots led to the discovery of even more items that Hill reportedly planned to unload.

“In a significant breach of trust, Adam Hill had the audacity to steal thousands of pounds of merchandise from Warner Bros in plain sight of his work colleagues; but they reported him after growing suspicious of the items constantly piling up under his desk,” Crown Prosecution Service’s Jan Muller said in a statement.

Hill was sentenced to 14 months in prison suspended for 18 months and 250 hours unpaid work.

Though it’s adding to the story that spanned seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation and continued through four movies, don’t expect Star Trek: Picard to be more of the same adventures in space exploration. According to Patrick Stewart, who plays the titular role in the upcoming CBS All Access show, the world of Star Trek: Picard is not the one fans remember from the series that started in 1987.

In an interview with Variety, Stewart laid out some of the fundamental differences between Star Trek: Picard and its predecessor show. The relatively safe, advanced world of TNG has changed fundamentally over the years between its conclusion and Picard, which picks up years later, he said.

“I think what we’re trying to say is important,” he said. “The world of ‘Next Generation’ doesn’t exist anymore. It’s different. Nothing is really safe. Nothing is really secure.”

“In a way, the world of ‘Next Generation’ had been too perfect and too protected,” Stewart said. “It was the Enterprise. It was a safe world of respect and communication and care and, sometimes, fun.”

Star Trek: Picard is taking a different tack as it revisits the world of the 24th century. It finds the legendary Captain Jean-Luc Picard retired from Starfleet and living out his life on his family’s vineyard in France. It seems there’s some trauma in Picard’s past: 15 years before the start of the series, he took part in a major rescue mission, and it doesn’t seem as though things went all that well. The story of what led to that mission is getting covered in CBS All Access’s Short Treks series, in an episode called “Children of Mars.”

Star Trek: Picard also looks to revisit, and perhaps recontextualize, some of the story points that popped up during TNG. The Borg played a big role on the series and seem to be pretty important in Star Trek: Picard, as well–Captain Picard was famously assimilated by the powerful cyborg race, and we’ll see the return of Hugh (Jonathan Del Arco), a Borg drone the Enterprise saved during TNG, return on Picard. Also slated to show up is Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan), a former Borg drone who regained her humanity on another series, Star Trek: Voyager.

“I explained to them all those elements of ‘Next Generation,’ which belong in ‘Next Generation,’ and why I didn’t want to go near them again,” Stewart said during the interview. “But they talked about it in such an interesting way. And they talked for a long time.”

So while there will be a lot of familiar faces in Star Trek: Picard–TNG characters Will Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), and Data (Brent Spiner) are confirmed to show up on the series–the show won’t be much like the original, it seems. Given how different the real world has become since the end of TNG in 1994, it makes sense.

Disclosure: CBS is GameSpot’s parent company.

The winter anime season begins in January and continues through March. This year sees a strong showing of anime–it’s very reminiscent of the Winter 2018 season. Despite the overwhelming number of choices, we dove into the list of upcoming series and movies to determine the ones that seem to be a must-watch.

In the video above, Jordan Ramée details the eight anime from the Winter 2020 season that we’re most looking forward to watching and think you should add to your own queues. Crunchyroll comes out as the heavy hitter this season, streaming five of the eight anime discussed in the video. That said, Amazon Prime Video is continuing its trend of silently dropping incredible-looking anime on its service, and several series and movies that debuted in Japan last year are finally making their way to the US this season.

Though Haikyu: To The Top–the long-awaited fourth season to perhaps the most popular sports anime of all time–is likely to be the crowd favorite this winter, don’t sleep on Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken. It’s difficult to pin down exactly what about this anime makes it seem like this series is going to be a dark horse, but the anime has already managed to create buzz within both the community and industry–and we really like it too.

Perhaps, just like 2018, this year will see the debut of its top contender for Anime of the Year within the very first month. Of course, it’s still way too soon to tell. Regardless, if you watch any anime this season, you might want to make sure it’s Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken. And if you have time for more, well we’ve got seven other recommendations for you. If you want even more recommendations, check out GameSpot’s anime guide videos from 2019.

A new study shows that the percentage of movies featuring female leads reached a new all-time high in 2019, though the amount of time women spoke on screen in 2019 fell slightly.

The Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University released the results of its 2019 poll that showed the percentage of the year’s highest-grossing movies featuring female leads jumped from 31 percent to 40 percent.

The study also showed that 43 percent of these films focused on male protagonists, while 17 percent had ensemble casts or a combination of men and women in lead roles.

For this study, a protagonist is defined as the character “from whose perspective the story is told.” Additionally, these characters are described as being “instrumental to the narrative of the story.” The study looked at more than 2,300 characters in the top 100 grossing American movies.

“There’s been a fierce debate in the industry about the reasons that movies have historically failed to tell stories about people of color, women, or members of the LGBTQ community, as well as spirited discussions about how to change things,” reads a line from the study’s excerpt. “Despite those gains, it’s worth noting that audiences are still twice as likely to see men on screen as women.”

Some of the other statistics in the study include that 37 percent of major characters were women, up 1 percent from 2018. Additionally, while the number of female protagonists rose in 2019, these characters overall spoke less. The study showed that 34 percent of all speaking characters were women, which is down 1 percent year-over-year.

The study also revealed that the percentage of black women in speaking roles dropped to 20 percent, down 1 percent from 2018, while the percentage of Latinas jumped from 4 percent to 5 percent, and 7 percent of female characters were of Asian descent (down 3 percent).

Some of 2019’s biggest movies featuring women in lead roles included Little Women, Us, Frozen 2, and Captain Marvel, among many others.

Some other statistics from the study include:

• Female characters were more likely (46 percent) than male characters (34 percent) to have a known marital status.
• 73 percent of male characters had an identifiable occupation in their movie, compared to 61 percent for women.
• Male characters were more likely to be shown at work, doing their job (59 percent) compared to women (43 percent).
• 45 percent of female leads were in studio movies, while 55 percent appeared in independent films. For comparison, 2018’s data showed that women were more than twice as likely to appear in an independent movie compared to a studio film.

Go to the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University’s website to read the full studies and get more details.

Given that this is the final season of Vikings, it should come as no surprise that viewers will be saying goodbye to certain familiar faces. After all, the series has never shied away from killing beloved–or hated–characters, whether they were a major force like Ragnar (Travis Fimmel) or any number of guest stars that appeared here and there. The latest death on the show hurts, though, and it’s going to be one that takes some time to properly mourn.

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the Vikings Season 6 episode “Death and the Serpent.” If you haven’t seen this installment yet, stop reading now then come back after you catch up. This isn’t one you’re going to want spoiled.

In the final moments, the Seer’s prophecy came to pass as Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) was killed by a son of Ragnar, her former husband. Losing his mind to hallucinations, Hvitserk (Stephen Rockett) believes he sees a giant snake–the episode’s titular serpent–stalking him, at which point he viciously attacks it with a knife, stabbing it countless times. It’s then revealed that the snake was actually a gravely injured Lagertha, fresh off a nearly fatal battle with the bandits that had attacked her settlement.

If you’re surprised it was Hvitserk that ended up being the son of Ragnar to end Lagertha’s life, you’re not the only one. “I thought it would be Ivar for a long time,” series creator Michael Hirst told GameSpot. “Hvitserk, in some ways, has come up and surprised me in many ways. I think I have such a strong sense of the other sons, who they were by and large, and I didn’t have that same clarity about Hvitserk. I wasn’t sure, in a sense, what I was going to do to him, but it was very interesting to have him as a sort of free agent.”

Still, even Winnick herself knew her character’s story had to end with her death. After all, it’s the Vikings way. “It was a long time coming in the sense that we’ve talked about feeling that Lagertha’s time is coming. She’s a granny,” the actress said. “After so many years and playing a whole my whole life on the show, in a sense. She started out as a young farmer, and now she’s a grandmother and retired shieldmaiden. Not many actors in their lives can say that they had a chance to play such an iconic character like Lagertha.”

When it came to crafting her exit from the show, though, Winnick wanted to make sure the character for a proper ending. “After all those years, I wanted to make sure in working with Michael that if Lathertha’s going to go, then make that it’s done right and does her character justice. And I do feel that with the last battle, it was an epic battle and it was a surprise of how she actually ended up going.”

“I have to say that Katheryn just grabbed hold of the whole storyline and her last fight is I think is one of the best jobs she did in this whole show,” Hirst revealed. “It’s this incredible fight, and during [the battle], it’s like the first time you could see in her eyes that she thinks she might lose. You know, I think that’s the first time that the warrior has ever felt [like], ‘I might not make it to this one.'”

Still, while she did survive that battle, Lagertha wasn’t long for the world. This isn’t the last you’ve seen of her on Vikings, though. The next episode will feature a funeral for the character in grand Viking fashion. In that way, not only will the people of Kattegat get to say goodbye, but so will the fans.

What of Hvitserk, though? After killing the mother of his own brother, his story is far from over. “It’s only just started because Hvitserk has gone down as low as he can get but slowly after that, and certainly [the second half of Season 6] be he rises to something quite extraordinary,” Hirst teased.

Vikings airs Wednesdays on History.

GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers.