Master of horror Stephen King sold the film rights to his short story Stationary Bike to students at the Blaenau Gwent Film Academy in Tredegar, Wales for a whopping $1.
As reported by LA Times (via Mashable), the film’s screenplay is written by 16-year-old Alfie Evans and 14-year-old Cerys Cliff. Roughly 30 students are expected to work on the project. Stationary Bike is one of the stories included in King’s collection Just After Sunset.
The Spyro Reignited Trilogy is quickly approaching, bringing the mascot character back to his roots before his trip to Skylands. The latest trailer shows the little dragon and his surrounding cast looking better than ever.
The reignited trilogy features three Spyro games that hit the PlayStation from 1998-2000. That includes Spyro the Dragon, Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage, and Spyro: Year of the Dragon. The character was notable at the time for its characterization and animation, and that shows well in this visual overhaul. Developer Toys for Bob had its work cut out for it creating an updated style that remains true to the original, which required some filling in the gaps.
“When you look at the original game and you squint your eyes at it, there’s a lot of imagination that you had to do at the time to fill in the blanks.” Toys For Bob co-studio head Paul Yan told us. “For us, it’s taking the game, and asking: What do people remember about this? It was important to start with the memories as opposed to how do you interpret exactly what’s on the screen.”
Pre-ordering can get you a Spyro keychain. There’s only one version of the game, so you don’t have to pick and choose between editions that are special or definitive. As a remaster of a classic trilogy, it comes in at a budget price of $40. It’s due to release on November 13 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Fallout 76’s beta is beginning today on Xbox One, and Bethesda has released a whole new batch of screenshots to mark the occasion. These images put an emphasis on the lovely vistas of West Virginia, albeit a slightly more irradiated version than you may have seen in the state’s tourism ads.
To prepare for launch, the company also released a letter to its fans thanking them for their support and cautioning that this is a very different kind of Fallout game. It stressed that the studio cares about these worlds and wants to do right by them, and that as an online and live game the launch of Fallout 76 would be just the beginning. The studio is looking ahead to a long period of bug fixes and other support.
“Given what we’re doing with 76, we know we’re opening everyone up to all new spectacular issues none of us have encountered,” Bethesda wrote. “Some we’re aware of, such as areas where performance needs to improve with lots of players.”
The beta is coming first to Xbox One, with PC and PS4 to follow on October 30. Pre-ordering will grant you access to the beta but you may not get in right away. Instead, Bethesda will be giving out codes for the beta itself as it invites in more players to stress test. For that same reason, the tests themselves will take place in concentrated chunks of a few hours at a time to force players together.
The beta is said to be the the full game and your progress will carry over to the full game. The full game launches on November 14.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
The Flash has quickly established a compelling family struggle in Season 5, with Barry and Iris dealing with having their time-displaced daughter Nora hanging around Central City. But while that new conflict seems to be working in the series’ favor, there’s still a long way to go when it comes to reinvigorating the supporting cast. “The Death of Vibe” is the first time the new season has turned its attention more towards Cisco, Caitlin and Ralph. It’s also the episode that introduces the Season 5 incarnation of Harrison Wells. But in both cases, the execution is mixed at best.
One thing this episode makes abundantly clear is that Nora has inherited her father’s talent for screwing with time and making bad situations even worse. The opening scene lends a little more context to both her decision to travel back in time and the threat posed by Cicada. We now know that he’s a serial killer who’s destined to never be caught, not even when heroes like Supergirl or Green Arrow are brought to bear. That’s all fine and well, but what’s more interesting is the reveal that Nora has already messed up time so badly that Cicada has now become a different person entirely. This episode featured a nod to the character’s traditional David Hersch identity from the comics while also making it clear that the series is moving in a completely different direction.
The upcoming Joker film starring Joaquin Phoenix is set to include depictions of both Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth.
Per The Hollywood Reporter (via Comicbook.com), Dante Pereira-Olson has been cast as a young Bruce Wayne, long before donning the black cowl and becoming Batman. Pereira-Olson and Joaquin Phoenix both starred in the recent film, You Were Never Really Here.
Dante Pereira-Olson in Happy! Credit: SYFY
When something comes along that as thoroughly exceeds my expectations in so many areas as Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, it reminds me why I got into video games in the first place. Far, far from a mere single player afterthought slapped onto a multiplayer collectible card game, CD Projekt Red has given us a sweeping, complex, emotional story with memorable characters, excellent voice acting, and varied, exciting card battles all along the way.
I was most blown away by the writing. Set just before the Witcher RPG trilogy during the Second Nilfgaard War, you take on the role of the dauntless, dynamic, many-layered Queen Meve of Lyria and Rivia. Every step of her journey is complicated by an overwhelming enemy, abundant political intrigue, and the kind of gut-twisting, no-right-answer moral choices the Witcher series has become known for. Are you willing to sacrifice your personal honor to preserve your basic, human decency? Are you willing to do what’s best for your soldiers at the expense of a possibly instrumental alliance? This tale recognizes no distinction between good and evil – only tough, emotional, imperfect compromises that stuck with me hours after I’d made them.
Every month, Netflix releases an enormous amount of content to its subscribers, and it can be a daunting task to figure out what to watch every week. It’s the end of October now, and the streaming giant has plenty of original movies and series for you to check out.
On Tuesday, October 23, Adam Sandler returns to his roots with 100% Fresh. The title obviously takes aims at his ratings from Rotten Tomatoes, as critics haven’t been incredibly kind to his film work, but the special itself veers away from addressing that, for the most part. 100% Fresh mixes jokes and songs that will remind fans of his classic 1996 HBO special What The Hell Happened To Me?
Netflix is doubling-down on horror series on Friday, October 26 with the second season of Castlevania. In our review of Castlevania, GameSpot’s Mike Rougeau said “With eight episodes instead of just four, there was hope that Castlevania Season 2 would feel like more of a complete thing. Instead, it feels more like Season 1 was the first act, and this is simply a continuation, and the extra room has been spent developing new characters while the old ones tread water.”
Also coming Friday is Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a darker take on the character than fans may be accustomed to. In our review, Chris Hayner said, “It’s hard to find something to dislike about Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. There’s a moment or two that might seem like the show is trying too hard to channel the teen angst and melodrama of Riverdale, but given they come from the same creative force, that’s not surprising. And if you’re going into it expecting incredibly cinematic visuals, you might be disappointed, as the inspiration for the show’s looks is clearly older horror films.”
For a full look at what’s coming to Netflix this week, take a look at the list below.
With Halloween nearly upon us, we’re seeing spooky events showing up in lots of games this month. Among them is the online shooter Destiny 2, a game that’s seen a significant uptick in fresh content since the launch of the Forsaken expansion. The latest update is the Festival of the Lost event, which runs between now and November 6 and introduces lots of new gear and cosmetics. The most sought-after reward in the whole event is a new auto rifle called Horror Story.
Horror Story is a fully-Masterworked Legendary auto rifle that comes with Zen Moment and Rampage. It’s also locked at 600 Light, which will give a nice Power boost to lower-level players. You can buy Horror Story from Amanda Holliday in the Tower, but to do so you’ll need to save up 120 Fragmented Souls, a new currency that was introduced in the Festival of the Lost. And the only way to get Fragmented Souls is to participate in a new PvE event called the Haunted Forest. Here’s everything you’ll need to do.
(If you’ve already unlocked the Haunted Forest, you can check out these 10 tips for surviving the Haunted Forest as well as a trick for escaping the scary pit at the end of each run.)
The first thing you’ll need to do after downloading the latest Destiny 2 update is head to the hangar in the east end of the Tower and talk to Amanda Holliday. She’ll give you a Master Rahool mask and assign you a mission to investigate Lost Sectors on Io. Drop in at The Rupture on Io and complete the mission. Once you do, head back to the Tower and talk to Amanda, who will ask you to investigate the Haunted Forest.
As luck would have it, you can find the Haunted Forest right on the map of the Tower. Before you launch, equip your mask and apply one of the three mods available for it. Also make sure to equip a favorable loadout before launching, because for some reason your gear is locked for the duration of this quest step.
The Haunted Forest is a darker, spookier version of the Infinite Forest, but your goal is simple. All you have to do here is clear out the enemies in each area until the text on the screen reads, “Branch clear 100%.” At this point, you’ll be teleported to a battle against a Nightmare version of a boss.
Defeat it, and you’ll be returned to the Tower, where you’ll have to talk to Amanda one more time. She’ll give you a nice reward for your trouble: the Fighting Lion grenade launcher, along with its catalyst. Now the Haunted Forest is open for business, which means you can begin collecting Fragmented Souls.
Regular trips through the Haunted Forest will net you a handful of Fragmented Souls, but collecting the 120 you’ll need to buy Horror Story requires a good deal of grinding, so you’ll want to maximize your time by getting all the advantages you can.
To get additional Souls, you can pick up all of the bounties Amanda Holliday has on offer. She sells five daily bounties that grant you one Soul each, plus one weekly bounty that gets you 40 Souls. To complete the weekly one you’ll need to do 15 Festival bounties, which is worthwhile, considering the weekly bounty gets you a third of the Souls you’ll need to buy the weapon.
Once you have the bounties, it’s time to head back to the Haunted Forest. You have two options for entering it: Haunted Forest and Firewalled Haunted Forest. The only difference is that Haunted Forest has matchmaking, while the Firewalled one does not. To maximize your Souls you’ll need a team of three players, so make sure to launch into the standard Haunted Forest option unless you’re already in a three-person Fireteam.
Each Haunted Forest run is similar to the one you did to unlock the area, except you and your partners have 15 minutes to clear as many branches as possible. When the timer runs out, you’ll be able to finish the branch you’re currently on, unless your team wipes. When it’s over, you’ll be transported near a loot chest that contains the Fragmented Souls you’ve earned. Don’t worry if you fail to collect the Souls for whatever reason–they’ll be waiting at the Postmaster.
As you collect Fragmented Souls, you might be tempted to spend them on masks and other items Holliday is selling, but you’ll probably want to wait until you get your hands on Horror Show before buying up the rest of her inventory. In any case, just make sure you save up 120 Souls before the Festival of the Lost goes away on November 6.
So you’ve finished your Daredevil binge. You’ve sat through 13 episodes and come out the other side feeling hopefully a little victorious, and probably a little confused. Don’t panic. We’re here to break down exactly what was going on in that final scene for you, and to explain just what it means in the increasingly uncertain future of the Netflix Marvel Universe.
Needless to say: spoilers abound after this, so please read with care if you haven’t finished this season!
As a result of his final confrontation with both Daredevil and Kingpin, Dex winds up paralyzed–specifically after Fisk breaks his spine over a wall corner, a move that Dex should probably be thankful didn’t just full on kill him. Instead, he’s left mumbling that he can’t move as the NYPD storms onto the scene. That very well could have been the end of things for poor Benjamin Poindexter–but it wasn’t.
After Fisk is put away and Matt, Foggy, and Karen begin regrouping, we’re treated to a scene of Dex laying face down on an operating table with his entire back slit open right down the middle. A team of doctors are working on his spine, speaking to one another about the risks of such an experimental procedure, and its less-than-optimistic odds of success. If that wasn’t weird enough, just before the final credits roll, we see Dex’s eyes are open, his pupils haloed with an irridescent bullseye shape.
The target symbol is the easy part. Like Fisk before this season, no one ever called Dex by any codename or call sign–the name “Bullseye” was never uttered in Daredevil Season 3, despite the obvious trajectory of the character. Dex may have completed his arc and wound up a full-on criminal by the end of the season, but his time as a costumed supervillain is presumably still to come (that is, if Daredevil doesn’t get canceled like Luke Cage and Iron Fist). Whether he’s going to assign the name to himself or get it from somewhere else like Fisk’s FBI agents naming him “Kingpin” in secret is still up for debate, but definitely something to keep an eye out for.
But what, exactly, is up with the surgery?
To really understand what’s happening, you’ll need to know a little bit about Bullseye’s comic book history. After a particularly nasty encounter with Daredevil that ended with Matt literally throwing him off of a telephone wire from several stories up, Bullseye was paralyzed and hospitalized. But things didn’t end there. Rather than let things go, Matt repeatedly broke into Bullseye’s hospital room and tortured him with a rigged game of Russian Roulette using a gun that was secretly unloaded, just to terrify and humiliate Bullseye as much as possible.
Of course, that cruelty comes back to haunt Matt in the end, after Bullseye is sprung from his hospital cell by a mysterious man named Lord Dark Wind, the scientist who invented the adamantium-based procedures that created heroes and villains like Wolverine and Lady Deathstrike. Dark Wind promises Bullseye his mobility if he undergoes the same procedure, lacing his bones with adamantium in exchange for becoming Dark Wind’s personal assassin.
The procedure actually goes according to plan, but Bullseye promptly betrays Dark Wind and returns to Hell’s Kitchen to work with Kingpin instead, complete with his new adamantium bones. They don’t help too much, however, and Daredevil is able to best him again and again. Bullseye retained his mobility for years, until he was killed and resurrected by The Hand in a botched ceremony that left him alive but completely paralyzed and confined to an iron lung. His second round with paralysis didn’t completely stop Bullseye’s quest to destroy Daredevil, however, and he spent his time confined in his own body engineering schemes where other people would end up doing his dirty work for him.
So, where does that leave Dex in the show? Well, Lord Dark Wind may not literally be in play for the Netflix MCU, but we do hear the name “Dr. Oyama” used during Dex’s surgery, a reference to the name Kenji Oyama, Dark Wind’s civilian alter ego. Additionally, the word “adamantium” is never used (probably something to do with the rights, considering it’s X-Men connotations) but the doctors do say that they’re repairing Dex’s spine with “cognium steel,” another, less known imaginary metal from the Marvel universe.
One thing that’s simply unclear is how Dex got to this operating table in the first place. We never actually see him transported from the scene, so we don’t know if he was arrested or convicted of the murders he committed while in the Daredevil suit, or if he was just sent directly to a hospital. We also don’t know whether or not Dr. Oyama reached out to Dex or if Dex reached out to him. There are a lot of variables left up in the air that could potentially inform the way a hypothetical fourth season pans out.
It’s important to note that even with the adamantium enhancements, the comics incarnation of Bullseye doesn’t actually have any superpowers beyond his uncanny marksmanship, so even if Dex’s experimental surgery is a success, he probably won’t become all that different than he was. If anything, he’ll just get much harder to hurt. But that definitely keeps with the Netflix MCU’s efforts to remain as “grounded” as possible while dealing with the most supernatural elements of superheroics. And Dex certainly does have a deep enough personal grudge against both Daredevil and Fisk to really push him over the edge once he’s back on his feet.
That, or it could be a complete failure and the next time we see Dex he could be encased in a tomb-like iron lung. Somehow, for a character like Bullseye, that seems just as terrifying.
It seems Sony loves nothing more than springing a surprise sale on PS4 owners. Right now, in addition to the regular weekly PlayStation Store sale, you can save up to 50% on a mountain of mostly spooky games to play during the lead-up to Halloween and beyond. As usual, PS Plus members get an extra discount on top of these deals. It’s the Sale of the Dead, and it runs between now and November 2. Let’s take a look at what deals are available.
If bang for your buck is what you’re after, you can pick up BioShock: The Collection for $26. These creepy games tell some of the best and most out-there stories you’ll find in any shooter on the market. And if you’d like to spend time trying to avoid death-by-xenoomorph, grab Alien: Isolation for $15.
With Devil May Cry 5 scheduled for March 2019, now is a great time to catch up on the series. You can pick up the first three games in Devil May Cry HD Collection for $18 and finish it off with Devil May Cry 4 Special Edition for $10.
Some early PS4 games are on sale for deep discounts right now, including The Order: 1886 for $5 and Until Dawn for $6. Both are cinematic horror stories. Speaking of, What Remains of Edith Finch ($20) is basically a playable collection of short stories that all revolve around death. One of them even takes place on Halloween.
What connection, exactly, Street Fighter has to horror is unclear; nevertheless, you can pick up Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition on sale for $28. Hitman: Game of the Year Edition might not seem like it has a Halloween connection, but in fact it does: you can grab the Halloween Pack for free right now. The full game is also discounted to $30 right now.
We have more selections below, or you can head to the PlayStation Store to see the full list of sale items.