Dune director Denis Villeneuve has revealed Zendaya will play the lead character in his planned sci-fi sequel.

Speaking with Italian magazine Il Venerdì di Repubblica, per DuneInfo (and translated independently by IGN), Villeneuve expressed his eagerness to work on Dune: Part 2 and even confirmed that Zendaya would emerge as the protagonist of the adaptation’s next installment, taking the reins from Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, who is the main focus of the upcoming release.

“I’m honoured to present on-screen two talents [Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya] that are so explosive, and I can’t wait to shoot the second part of Dune to get them back together. Knowing that in the next chapter Zendaya will be the protagonist of the story,” Villeneuve explained, briefly touching on the prospect of the Spider-Man actress’ enhanced role.

Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune movie is the first of a planned duology adapting Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel, which chronicles a power struggle between the warring houses of Atreides and Harkonnen in a distant future where a psychotropic “spice” known as Melange is the most coveted resource in all the universe.

In the movie, Timothée Chalamet plays Paul Atreides, a gifted scholar and warrior whose very existence threatens the balance of power in the galaxy. He is forced to grow up quickly when his family encounters major hardships in their move to the desert planet Arrakis, where he must unite the free tribes of Dune and restore the honor of House Atreides.

Zendaya stars opposite Chalamet, portraying Chani, a girl who first appears as a recurring presence in Paul’s dreams. Chani is the daughter of Imperial Planetologist Liet-Kynes and a member of a nomadic Fremen tribe on Arrakis. She is instrumental in helping Paul learn the ways of the Fremen and seize his destiny as an intergalactic revolutionary.

In addition to Chalamet and Zendaya, Dune also stars Oscar Isaac as Duke Leto Atreides, Josh Brolin as Gurney Halleck, Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica Atreides, Jason Momoa as Duncan Idaho, Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban, Sharon Duncan-Brewster as Dr. Liet Kynes, and Javier Bardem as Stilgar, amongst others.

Dune has been in production for several years now. It was originally set for a November 2020 release, but was subsequently delayed a year due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Despite reports of a 45-day exclusive theatrical release window, it is currently set for a same-day release in theaters and HBO Max.

If you want to know more, here’s everything you need to know about the movie, and why the adaptation will be split across two movies. Dune will be out on October 22.

Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

Normally, the toughest decisions to be made on a cross-country road trip amount to which salty snacks to stock up on at the service station and who gets control of the radio, but navigating your way along Road 96 takes you down a series of highways with significantly higher stakes. This narrative-based adventure makes an unlikely marriage out of a Telltale Games-style approach to choice and consequences and the procedurally generated repeat runs of a roguelike, somehow making it work as a mostly cohesive and consistently captivating journey through to its final destination.

It’s a trip that succeeds largely due to the appeal of a recurring cast of central characters that you meet as you head north in an attempt to cross the border and escape the fictional country of Petria. Set in the nineties but seemingly inspired by Trump’s America, Petria is a nation divided, and thus the people you meet sit on varying points on the political spectrum. They range from a hilariously vapid right-wing journalist to computer hacking anarchist and Travis Bickle-esque nihilist, the latter of which supplies Road 96’s most menacing moments as you try and talk your way out of a number of simmering situations at gunpoint.

It’s not all life-or-death, but certainly some care has to be taken to keep certain characters onside and also propagate your own political beliefs, both of which shape Road 96’s eventual outcome. Alleviating any anxiety brought on by constant decision making are a healthy variety of fun side activities at each stop along the roadside, whether it’s bartending and petrol-pumping minigames to earn extra money, or assisting a policewoman with an investigation by interviewing motel guests and eliminating suspects based on their responses, like a game of Guess Who? Some of these diversions are pretty far-fetched – like when I had to beta test a homebrew video game on a laptop while driving a stolen car – but no less entertaining or memorable.

On the Road Again

Each journey to the Petrian border takes up to an hour and can culminate with you successfully fleeing the country, but it can also end in arrest or even death at any point along the way, depending on your actions. Regardless of how your run ends, you begin again as another anonymous member of the disenfranchised youth and take consecutive shots at freedom as the days and months tick down towards Road 96’s climax: the Petrian presidential election. These recursive runs reveal more about the main characters each time, thrusting you into new interactions with them in randomised sequence without ever repeating any given scenario. One moment you might be supervising a wall of security camera feeds to help a pair of hapless robbers, while a few more miles down the road you might find yourself standing in as a cameraman at a pressurised political rally. All the while, Road 96 continues to swerve from one surprising situation to the next.

Subsequent scrambles towards the border are given added flexibility as you unlock power-ups that persist between runs, such as a lockpicking skill to steal cash out of office drawers or a cleverness boost that unlocks additional dialogue options. Over time, the connections between Road 96’s main characters are revealed, and although there were no shocking plot twists I still enjoyed unravelling the mystery surrounding a certain major tragedy in Petria’s past that defined the disparate ideologies of its inhabitants.

There’s also some light strategy involved in determining exactly how you’ll proceed from one stop to the next. Catching a bus or calling a taxi gives you the opportunity to rest and recover lost health, but both cost money, which is in extremely limited supply. Whereas walking or hitchhiking are free, but the former saps you of health while you never know exactly who is going to pick you up during the latter – a lift from a truck driver might be fairly sedate, or it could spiral into violence as you’re forced to help him defend his cargo from bandits. Managing health and cash reserves is crucial in determining how you’ll cross the border to freedom should you make it all the way north, since you’re presented with multiple options that range from enduring an arduous hike over the mountains or simply bribing a border patrol guard to look the other way.

Roadwork Ahead

Thumbing for rides wasn’t the only kind of hitch I experienced in Road 96, though. Outside of the main characters, there are only a small number of faces reused for other Petrian citizens you meet, which makes it seem a bit like you’re caught in a transcontinental Truman Show each time you travel from a budget motel to a burger joint and the proprietors and patrons all resemble the same small supporting cast. Meanwhile, anytime you’re actually out on the road there’s a weirdly unnatural way that trees and billboards sprout up into existence as you head toward the horizon that distracts somewhat from Road 96’s otherwise vibrant vistas.

There’s also the occasional inconsistency between story runs. For example, at the end of one run I opted to stowaway inside the back of a delivery truck to get across the border, and only just survived because I had built up enough health to hold my breath for the full duration of a spot check from the border patrol guards. However, my immediate run afterwards opened with a GNN news bulletin about a teenager who’d been caught hiding in the back of a truck and arrested. There were certainly times where the seams between the complex patchwork of Road 96’s story segments were more visible than others, but thankfully these incongruous moments merely amounted to minor potholes rather than major plot holes.

Potentially more damaging is the way that dialogue options hover beside the character you’re speaking with, and thus have a tendency to move around the screen whenever a person wanders. At one point late in the game I was asked to describe the appearance of a certain character, but the dialogue boxes jumped suddenly as I chose my reply and I ended up clicking on the wrong one, at which point a giant ‘The killer’s appearance remains unknown’ message popped up onscreen. I can only wonder how dramatically different things would have played out had I made the choice I’d actually intended at that moment, since I was never given the opportunity to identify them again.

Ultimately I was satisfied with how my eight-hour journey through Road 96 resolved. Which is just as well, since according to the developers there are somewhere in the vicinity of a thousand different potential routes to take due to the procedural nature of Road 96, and there are no do-overs short of starting all over again. When you have a form of storytelling that hinges so precariously on choice, it’s a shame that the balance can be upset by such a simple quirk with the interface.

Your resolve has been rewarded, o’ patient one. Now you can score a whiole bunch of Ultimate and Deluxe editions for around (or even below) the price of Standard Edition. I’ve also sourced a few fitness / wellness titles for the locked down among you. Last but not least, Capcom has dragon punched large percentages off, well, basically everything in its PC roster. All these savings and more await you below!

Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch

Purchase Cheaply for PC

Exciting Offers for XO/XS

Product Savings for PS4/PS5

Sign up to get the best Aussie gaming deals sent straight to your inbox!

Adam’s an Aussie deals wrangler who spends too much of his income on the bargains he finds. You can occasionally find him @Grizwords.

Guilty Gear Strive’s second DLC character is Jack-O’ Valentine, an artificial life form who was first introduced in Guilty Gear X Plus, and she will be available to Season Pass 1 holders on August 27, 2021, before going on sale to all players on August 30.

While Jack-O’ was only part of Sol’s Ending in Guilty Gear X Plus, she made her playable debut in Guilty Gear XRD -Revelator- and also appeared in Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2, as well as the novel Guilty Gear X Lightning the Argent.

Soon, she will be part of Guilty Gear Strive, and you can check out a first look at her gameplay here.

According to the official description, Jack-O’ is “an artificial life form fused with the protagonist Sol’s former love’s consciousness with high skills in combat and a powerful arsenal that allows her to overtake her opponent easily.”.

Goldlewis Dickinson was Guilty Gear Strive’s first DLC character, and Season Pass 1 will have three additional characters following Jack-O’, including one more in 2021 and two in 2022. 2022 will also bring with it two new battle stages and more story content to the game.

In our Guilty Gear Strive review, we said that it “sets a new standard for anime-like fighting games with its visuals, stellar netcode, and flexible fighting system that encourages and rewards creativity.”

For more on Guilty Gear Strive, check out our favorite mods so far, including one that lets you play as Alphonse Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Summer too hot to handle? Our deals today aim to fix that, as Amazon has a series of deals on air conditioners, both window and free standing. If that’s not what you’re looking for today, we’ve still got a deal on the LG 4K TV, although the gift card no longer comes with it, as well as savings on the Apple Watch, some Beats Ear Buds and more.

Ryan Reynolds’ Free Guy had a strong opening weekend at the domestic box office, earning $28.4 million in 4,165 North American theaters.

As reported by Variety, Free Guy brought in another $22.5 million internationally and is over halfway in its quest to recoup its production budget of over $100 million. This debut is obviously hindered by the concerns over the delta variant of COVID-19, but it was also strengthened by the fact that Free Guy was only available in theaters.

The Suicide Squad, which won last weekend’s domestic box office with $26.5 million, is also available to all HBO Max subscribers and is rated R as opposed to Free Guy’s PG-13 rating, which both are factors that led to its underwhelming performance. As Variety notes, Free Guy joins F9, A Quiet Place Part II, and Snake Eyes as films that were initially available exclusively in theaters, but it stands alone in being a film that is not part of an existing universe.

Don’t Breathe 2, which only had a budget of $15 million, took second place with $10.6 million. While it must be noted that the original didn’t release during a global pandemic, the sequel’s opening weekend was lower than the $26.4 million Don’t Breathe earned in 2016.

Jungle Cruise sailed its way to a third-place win with $9 million, Respect took fourth with $8.8 million, and The Suicide Squad took fifth by earning $7.7 million – a 72% decline from its opening weekend.

Besides its strong performance in theaters, all things considered, Free Guy is also receiving positive reviews from all over, including from IGN. In our Free Guy review, we said that it “is a free-wheeling love letter to video games. While it boasts playful humor and some special moves, this wobbly romp ultimately falls short of the high score.”

Disney is also apparently happy with Free Guy, as Reynolds has confirmed that the studio officially wants a sequel.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Marvel’s Avengers senior game designer Scott Walters has confirmed that Spider-Man is still on track to swing his way into the game for PlayStation players before the end of 2021.

Speaking to Screen Rant, Walters said that Spidey was always scheduled for 2021 and that plan hasn’t changed dramatically, even with challenges brought on by COVID-19 and otherwise.

“In terms of what we can say now, we’ve always scheduled and looked to bring Spider-Man out in 2021 for PlayStation owners. That is still on track, so we’ll have more announcements later on this year,” Walters said.

Crystal Dynamics studio head Scot Amos spoke to IGN earlier this year about Spider-Man, and while he shared that that team was hard at work on bringing him into the game, he gave no concrete release window besides saying he would not join the roster before Summer 2021 and Black Panther.

Spider-Man was announced as a PlayStation-exclusive playable character for Marvel’s Avengers in August 2020 with a planned release of early 2021, but that window has come and gone. We still have yet to see what Spidey looks like in-game, but with the War for Wakanda expansion releasing on August 17 and there only being a bit over four months left in the year, it may not be long until we learn more.

The news of Spider-Man being exclusive to PlayStation players was met with its fair share of controversy. Not only was Marvel’s Avengers not getting a ton of content at the time, but many have also been worried that this version of Spider-Man may not be as spectacular as he could have been since only a certain amount of players will have access to him.

Marvel’s Avengers has since added both Hawkeye and Kate Bishop, and our hands-on with the War for Wakanda expansion and Black Panther have been promising. Hopefully, Spider-Man will be part of the next big wave of content for the game, especially considering that War for Wakanda was one of the last items on its 2021 Content Roadmap so far.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.

Heels premieres Sunday, Aug. 15 on Starz.

Stephen Amell’s first big post-Arrow project is a love letter to one of the actor’s favorite entertainment mediums: professional wrestling. Amell, who’s actually wrestled two huge, high-profile matches (one for WWE and the other for a pre-AEW gathering/merging of promotions), brings a harsh (but welcome) earnestness to this portrayal of the business, Heels, which is the best representation and dramatization of wrestling to hit the screen yet.

That’s not to say it’s perfect, or that Heels’ premiere episode, “Kayfabe,” isn’t without its bumps, but it’s able to operate both as a fascinating facsimile for wrestling fans and also a keen insider-y look behind the business, beyond the curtain, for viewers who may not know how things in this particular industry work. Look, it’s always a challenge to make a show or film about a wholly different storytelling mechanism. We’ve seen many shows and movies about people making TV shows or putting on plays or writing music that are about the actual artistic process of a totally different creative expression. Even TV sketch comedy has gone the route of both 30 Rock and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Fortunately, since it didn’t work out well for Studio 60, Amell’s project benefits from heavy-handedness. Wrestling, unlike the other aforementioned mediums, is a strange beast to capture. It’s hard to describe, in words, to the non-initiated. Even just taking someone to a show doesn’t give them the full breadth of this magical, complex box of mayhem and athleticism. People who know little to nothing about it think it’s the complete opposite of what it is.

So Amell — along with creator Michael Waldron (Rick & Morty, Loki) and showrunner Mike O’Malley (actor: Glee; Yes, Dear; Snowpiercer) — displaying this wild universe in a way that’s easily accessible, while also providing enough soapy (in a good way) family drama and character conflict to keep the serialized TV series engine afloat, is a wonderful trick. Also, to the benefit of die-hard wrestling nerds like me, Heels explores some of the fun inner-workings of having to serve a hundred different masters when telling a wrestling story (the story itself, the business and putting asses in seats, the actual talent involved, the actual moral fiber of that talent, the competition, etc).

One thing that stands out, but may possibly go unnoticed by those unaware of modern wrestling, is that Heels feels, possibly by design, “out of time.” It’s clearly set in the now, or close-ish, as there’s YouTube and smartphones, but the overall story itself feels hugely yesteryear — like ’70s, ’80s, or mid-’90s. It resembles a time when there were way more small wrestling promotions with traditional booking styles and an all-male roster (yes, no women’s wresting in this show’s league). There’s also a nearby Floridian competitor that’s meant to evoke mid/late-’90s Extreme Championship Wrestling.

Part of this loving look-back vibe is so this particular story can be told, as it doesn’t quite work solidly in 2021, and another, presumedly, is as a nod to the era Amell grew up with. Also, narratively, it fits that the DWL — the Duffy Wrestling League — is a stubborn holdout against progress, since it saddles up to Amell’s Jack Spade and that character’s rigid obstinance.

Amell and Vikings’ Alexander Ludwig play brothers Jack and Ace Spade, respectively. Sons of a wrestling legend, Tom Spade, Jack inherited his father’s small-potatoes Duffy, Georgia wrestling promotion while younger brother Ace, a high school football hero and loose cannon, got left in the lurch. Both currently wrestle for DWL while Jack operates as its owner, sole booker (writer/plotter) and top villain (“heel”). Ace, despite his real-life disposition (which leans toward cocky and mean) is the hero set to dethrone Jack for the top championship. Meanwhile, Ace is being scouted by an “up north” (this show’s acknowledgement of WWE) recruiter Wild Bill (True Blood’s Chris Bauer) and wants to win DWL’s top prize before he takes off for greener pastures.

This is where family and art clash, as Jack must figure out how to book this match. Does he win or does he give the fans what they want (for the hero to win, though tradition states you lose on your way out the door)? Also, does he reward someone like Ace, who can’t even act nice in public to keep up his faux hero persona? Ace argues that wrestling should be fun while Jack fires back with “but not at the expense of being good.” Two different views of wrestling — wish-fulfillment vs. slow-burn storytelling that requires patience — from two different performers representing varying degrees of bitterness and resentment. It’s a tremendous merging of the worlds, wrestling, and family (none of this works without the family dynamic, really), and it might have been the only good way to expose, dramatically, the craft of the sport.

“Kayfabe” is a nice jumping off point for this new series, though it also works on its own as a mini-movie, telling the one story. The ending is a corker, landing as both a swerve to build off of and also its own sort of exhibitive exclamation point. Basically, the hallmark of a good pilot. The supporting cast is strong — from Mary McCormack’s droll and reliable DWL manager to Kelli Berglund’s “secret mind for business” valet Crystal — though one character, played by Trey Tucker, feels the most like an expositional insert, as he’s a rookie who the other wrestlers get to explain the ins and outs of the business to (thereby explaining it to us). But it’s mostly forgivable, since wrestling is a tough nut to crack.

Meanwhile Amell, in proverbial hog heaven, invisibly aided and advised by his good friends in the wrestling industry, is out there doing his own mat work, making Jack Spade look like a devilish showman and giving us a character who’s nearly as obsessed as Oliver Queen. And it makes for a hell of a match.