The month has nearly run its course but there’s still plenty of May Madness in the old girl yet. Case in point(s): The Gamesmen doing a clearance sale on Cyberpunk 2077, Steam losing Control of its pricing department, plus a whole bunch of amiibo and essential AAAs going for cheap, too.

Purchase Cheaply for PC

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Notable Sales for Nintendo Switch

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Exciting Offers for XO/XS

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Product Savings for PS4/PS5

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Other Deals for May 25

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As theaters reopen and the North American box office regrows, studios are continuing to experiment with new release strategies for films. Universal will simultaneously release The Boss Baby: Family Business on Peacock and in theaters. The animated sequel will debut on July 2, over two months earlier than the initially slated premiere date of September 17.

According to NBCUniversal, Peacock has garnered more than 42 million subscriptions since its soft launch in April 2020. The Boss Baby: Family Business will be available to Peacock’s Premium and Premium Plus subscribers for no extra fee. Peacock also has a free subscription model that includes a limited library and ad-supported programming.

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As Peacock has not yet launched overseas, Universal will also release the animated movie in some international theatrical markets on July 2.

The Boss Baby: Family Business is NBCUniversal’s first foray into a hybrid theatrical-streaming release, a model that WarnerMedia and Disney have employed during the pandemic. Warner Bros. has continued with its decision to debut its 2021 slate of theatrically-released movies concurrently on HBO Max for a one-month exclusive window. The strategy began with Wonder Woman 1984 in December and will carry through to upcoming blockbusters like Dune and The Suicide Squad.

Meanwhile, Disney will release Black Widow and Cruella in theaters and through $30 rentals on Disney Plus as part of the streaming service’s Premier Access program. The studio is also planning to make Pixar’s upcoming film Luca available to Disney Plus subscribers at no extra cost.

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In the early stages of the pandemic last April, theater owners threatened to boycott Universal’s slate of movies after the studio announced plans to release Trolls World Tour in theaters and on demand simultaneously. An agreement was reached in which Universal would release is theatrical films on video-on-demand services 17 days after their theatrical debut, which led to a respectable $167.5 million global box office gross for The Croods: A New Age last fall.

In our review of The Boss Baby, IGN gave the first animated film a 4.8, saying the movie was filled with “nothing but noticeably subpar moments and emotional beats that are too complicated and nonsensical to ring true in any way,”

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J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

The cake may be a lie, but here’s the truth: JJ Abrams’ long-rumored adaptation of Valve’s hit game Portal is in active development at Warner Bros. 

During a press day for the home release of Super 8’s 4K Blu-ray, Abrams confirmed the Portal movie’s status to IGN. “We actually do have a script that’s being written for the Portal movie now at [Warner Bros.]. We’re really excited about the take and the pitch, so it feels like that thing’s finally on the rails.” Abrams’ suggestion towards Portal’s long development may remind you that it’s been eight years since he and Valve founder Gabe Newell first announced that Bad Robot and Valve were looking to work together at DICE 2013. 

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Abrams didn’t reveal the writer(s) behind the Portal script, or whether any directors have been approached about the project yet, but he is excited to expand on the fertile storytelling ground of the games. “It’s got enormous potential for a lot of reasons, one of which is because of the limited narrative of the game, as ingeniously told as it is, the potential of it is so huge. It’s gonna be super fun.” That makes it sound like the film may hew closer to the first Portal, which followed silent protagonist Chell, a test subject at Aperture Science who has to escape the (mostly) decommissioned facility using only (only) a gun that creates portals. The story progressed mostly through the dialogue of Aperture Science’s insane AI, GlaDOS. Portal 2 did expand a lot on Aperture Science’s history, and featured an iconic performance from J.K. Simmons as Aperture Science’s founder, Cave Johnson. 

And yes, Abrams acknowledged that there’s likely to be fan outcry for Simmons to return to the role in live-action (hey, Marvel fans got their way in Spider-Man: Far From Home.)

While the relative freedom that a Portal adaptation allows for is clearly a boon for what Abrams and Bad Robot have planned, it seems like the adaptation of the lore-rich Half-Life has been harder to crack. When asked about the status of the Half-Life movie, which Bad Robot was developing as of September 2016, Abrams said “the Half-Life thing, we’re not actively involved with at the moment.” While Portal and Half-Life are part of a shared gaming universe, it sounds like there’s no pressure to establish that world in a live-action Half-Life project first. And so the debate about whether the silent Gordon Freeman should talk in a movie adaptation can be laid to rest. For now.

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This is just one of a number of high-profile projects Abrams has in development at Warner Bros. right now. Since signing a $500 million contract with WarnerMedia in 2019, Abrams has been attached to several projects at the studio, most notably a number of their upcoming DC films and streaming shows. Warner Bros.’s success with video game movies — both Detective Pikachu and Mortal Kombat performed well — make it clear that they’re ready to leverage their budding relationship with Abrams (and by extension, Valve) to continue being a major player in that space. 

Super 8, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, releases on 4K Blu-ray in stores and online on Tuesday, May 25th.

Ubisoft officially announced its E3 2021 event. Dubbed Ubisoft Forward, it will add to the series of digital conferences Ubisoft has held over the last year. This one feels a bit special though, as it’s taking place during a time where many of us expect to see plenty of exciting gaming news. While details about the event itself are thin, here’s when and where you can watch it, as well as some guesses at what Ubisoft might show.

When is the Ubisoft Forward E3 2021 Conference?

Ubisoft’s digital conference takes place on June 12 at 12pm PDT, 3pm EDT, and 8pm BST. If you’re tuning in from Australia, that’s June 13 at 5am AEST. 

How to Watch the Ubisoft Forward Conference During E3 2021

Since Ubisoft’s conference is a part of E3 2021 which is also part of IGN’s Summer of Gaming, you can count on us to carry this stream and most other streams related to these events. Here is the list of places you can watch the Ubisoft Forward stream at E3 2021:

• IGN.com
• IGN’s Facebook Channel
• IGN’s Twitter
• IGN’s Twitch Channel
• IGN’s YouTube Channel
• IGN’s iOS App
• IGN’s Android App
• IGN’s PlayStation 4 App
• IGN’s Xbox One App
• Roku
• IGN App for Android TV
• IGN for Amazon Fire TV
• Apple TV
• IGN 1 on Samsung TV Plus
• Pluto TV
• Plex Live TV

What Ubisoft Games Might Be Shown at E3 2021?

When it comes to news on games or other content Ubisoft has planned for its E3 2021 conference, we’re still waiting to hear more. Not much has been revealed outside of the date and time its supposed to air. That said, we can speculate a bit about what could be shown based on recent news.

It’s no secret many of Ubisoft’s games were plagued by development delays over the last year. Many were pushed to this year or later into this year, which could mean we’ll hear more about them come E3. If we look at the lineup of games listed as “coming soon” in the Ubisoft Store, Far Cry 6, Rainbow Six: Quarantine, Riders Republic, and Roller Champions all seem like good candidates for Ubisoft’s conference. The same goes for the recently announced The Division Heartland.

Far Cry 6 was delayed earlier this year but still has a release window of 2021. Rainbow Six: Quarantine was also delayed but is supposed to launch before September 30, 2021 (per a third-quarter earnings call). Roller Champions and Riders Republic were delayed but still have release windows in 2021. The Division Heartland was recently announced and slated for 2021, as well.

Other titles like the Avatar game, Skull & Bones, Beyond Good & Evil, and even Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time could make the cut, but with many of their release windows being a bit further out and/or updates on them being slim, it likely lowers the chances of them being shown. The Avatar game from Massive Entertainment was delayed in late 2020 and now has a window between April 2021 to March 2022. Earlier this year, Skull & Bones was delayed for a third time, in a window between 2022 to 2023. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake was delayed earlier this year and is expected to release before April 2022.

Hopefully, Ubisoft reveals some information about what it intends to show so we can have something concrete to look forward to. We’d love to get some updates on Beyond Good & Evil and Skull & Bones, even if it’s a peek at what the studios have been working on. That said, we encourage you to check back here as we’ll be updating this hub with more details as they come out.

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Felicia Miranda is SEO Editor at IGN. You can find her babbling about retro games at @FeliciaVagabond on Twitter.

Considering its high production value and intensely violent material, it’s no surprise that Game of Thrones secured a reputation as one of TV’s most difficult productions before it concluded its run in 2019. In an interview with Collider, Hannah Waddingham, who played Unella, one of the Septa of the Faith of Seven that served under the High Sparrow, recalled shooting a scene in which her character was tortured that became “the worst day of [the actress’] life.”

In the Season 6 finale, Lena Headey’s Cersei Lannister gets revenge on Unella. Unella had imprisoned Cersei before and shouted “shame” during her walk of atonement in one of the show’s most famous scenes. Unella is last seen being tortured by Cersei before being left in the hands of The Mountain.

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Waddingham recalled receiving updates to the script as she was flying out to film the scene. At first, she was confused by the sudden call for her to wear a wetsuit for the shoot.

“There I was, strapped to a wooden table with proper big straps for ten hours,” Waddingham said. “Other than childbirth, it was the worst day of my life. Lena [Headey] was uncomfortable pouring liquid on my face for that long and I was beside myself. In those moments you have to think ‘Do you serve the peace and get on with it?’ Or do you chicken out and go, ‘No, this isn’t what I signed up for.”

Waddingham went on to recall a later interaction she had with fellow Game of Thrones actor Eugene Simon, who played Lancel Lannister in the show.

“[Eugene] was like, ‘Oh my god, what happened to you today?’ I could barely speak because I’d been screaming through The Mountain’s hand,” Waddingham said. “I had no voice at all to barely whisper, bruises already coming up like I’d been attacked. I was like, ‘I’ve basically just been waterboarded for ten hours.’ And he went, ‘Mate, I’ve just been crawling through sh— for four days on my elbows…’ You haven’t been in Game of Thrones unless you’ve been really, really battered around.”

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Waddingham can now be seen as a main cast member on Apple TV+’s comedy series Ted Lasso. In our review of Season 1, IGN gave Ted Lasso a 9 and said “Waddingham brings comedic nuance” in the role of Rebecca, the owner of the show’s central English football club.

In other Game of Thrones news, HBO’s first spin-off series House of the Dragon recently entered production. For a rundown on what Westeros lore the prequel show could dive into, read our explainer on the upcoming project.

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J. Kim Murphy is a freelance entertainment writer.

The live-action Powerpuff Girls series is not going beyond a pilot…for now, reports Deadline.

The CW reportedly ordered a slate of series for the rest of 2021, including Naomi and All American: Homecoming. The “Powerpuff” pilot evidently did not make the cut and will be reworked as a new pilot.

Thankfully for eager fans, the cast and crew will largely stay attached to the project, including Chloe Bennet (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), Dove Cameron (Descendants), Yana Perrault, and Donald Faison (Scrubs) as well as writer-producers and other cast members.

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Powerpuff, based on Cartoon Network’s original superhero animated series that ran from 1998 to 2005, follows Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup as they become “disillusioned twenty-somethings who resent having lost their childhood to crime-fighting.” A reboot of the cartoon also aired in 2016.

Powerpuff is still being written and executive produced by Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer’s Body) and Heather Regnier (Veronica Mars, iZombie), with the pair handling the rewrite.

Powerpuff going back to a rewrite and re-piloted suggests The CW didn’t see a good fit for it in its 2021 slate, which seems odd given we saw the first look of the cast in their iconic colors last April. Development on Powerpuff began last summer.

Warner Bros TV Group President Channing Dungey spoke with Deadline last week about the production.

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“We’ve got a trio of terrific actresses at the center of that,” she said. “I’m not going to say that it hasn’t been a challenge. Bringing a children’s cartoon into live-action adulthood has been a really fine line to walk, but I think we’ve done a pretty great job walking it.”

There’s currently no confirmed release window for when Powerpuff will officially debut.

For more, check out our list of the best adult cartoon TV shows.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/Mojo JoJo

Move over Black Friday. When it comes to Dell, the best deals don’t come in November, but right here and right now in May. The Dell Memorial Day Sale has always offered the best deals you could find on Alienware gaming PCs and gaming laptops, and this year looks to be no different. Although Memorial Day is still several days away, some deals have already started today. We’ll keep adding more top deals as they show up at Dell all the way through Memorial Day weekend.

Dell and Alienware Coupon Codes

If you’re looking at a particular desktop or laptop PC model that hasn’t been discounted, you can used one of these codes to get a little extra knocked off your total. Note, however, that some configs are excluded from any additional discounts.

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Early Dell Memorial Day Gaming Laptop Deals

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Early Dell Memorial Day Gaming PC Deals

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Early Dell Memorial Day Gaming Monitor Deals

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New 2021 Alienware Aurora R12 RTX 30 Series Gaming PCs

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New 2021 Alienware RTX 30 Series Gaming Laptops

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Eric Song is IGN’s deal curator and spends roughly 1/4 of his income on stuff he posts. Check out the IGN Deals articles and subscribe to the IGN Deals Twitter page.

Master of None Presents: Moments in Love is available to stream on Netflix.

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One of Netflix’s best series from a few years back, Master of None, has returned with little-to-no fanfare, reeling from the aftermath of sexual misconduct accusations against creator/star Aziz Ansari and his subsequent self-exile from social media. For its third outing (four years after Season 2), titled “Master of None Presents: Moments in Love,” the series has dropped a wrenching, fascinatingly granular examination of a relationship’s implosion along with the ebbs and flows of being complicatedly human. It’s a stunning watch featuring astonishing, bare performances. Although, the stylistic elements of the series lean a little too far into naturalism and cinéma-vérité at times.

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That being said, it’s Ansari’s admiration for European directors of the ’60s and ’70s that helps Moments in Love resonate as fully as it does. Also, never quite falling off the edge of the cliff into a static David Lynch dreamscape or a standoffish Stanley Kubrick wide shot, Ansari, who directed and co-wrote all five episodes of Moments in Love, utilizes a subdued fly-on-the-wall technique to actually help draw out the warmth in a lot of scenes.

Usually, this approach to filming is used to make things feel colder and less intimate, but here, tracking the tides and turns of star and co-writer Lena Waithe’s Denise and her wife, Naomi Ackie’s Alicia, the quietness actually draws us in. By design, Moments in Love is also meant to push us away, maybe even to the point where we summon up uncomfortable feelings ourselves.

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Season 2’s “Thanksgiving,” which focused on Denise coming out as a lesbian, won Ansari and Waithe an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series. For Moments in Love, Denise takes center stage (though Ansari’s Dev appears a few times) in a way that allows the series and story to continue without Ansari, but also not feel jarringly out of left field. Denise was a focal point in past seasons, so the Master of None universe shifting over to showcase her life and struggles feels like a genuine transition.

Moments in Love’s more exaggerated affinity for candid realism helps these chapters stand apart from the series’ first two runs while still feeling tethered. As a continuation, or branching out of Master of None, it works. Some moments flutter by like fleeting curiosities while others floor with heavy devastation.

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Season 3’s story, which charts the rise and fall of Denise and Alicia’s marriage in rural upstate New York, is diced up and dished out strangely. Longer episodes could have been split in two, or shorter episodes could have been combined, but instead, the delivery system is a bit messy. Though all of this, mind you, affords Moments in Love to deliver its best offering, “Chapter 4,” uninterrupted. With the lengthy fourth episode, Naomi Ackie’s Alicia and her personal struggles really profoundly grab hold. 

Portrayed as Denise’s flighty, demanding wife in the three previous episodes, “Chapter 4” explores the multitudes and layers of a character determined to succeed on their own, with only themselves to turn toward for support and strength. Ackie is magnificent, and although this episode carries the most purposeful pauses and scenes that feel like a walk-by heartache museum exhibit, it’s also the most vulnerable and riveting. It might be the one you think about the most afterward.

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As the old World War II adage goes, “loose lips sink ships,” and it looks like the upcoming Battlefield 6, due to be officially announced in June is leaking like an upside down dreadnought. A number of leaks have appeared throughout the internet, supposedly showing off numerous vague looks at what we can expect from the next large-scale FPS franchise entry.

Rocket and Storm images

Back in early May, Twitter user Tom Henderson — known for reliably leaking multiple bits of Battlefield information in the past — confirmed two leaked images were from Battlefield 6. One image features an aerial shot of a large rocket ship launch pad while the other features a classically immense map of an island populated with several large buildings  as it’s swarmed with VTOLs.

“I’m not going to RT or share for obvious reasons… But yes, the 2 #BATTLEFIELD images that have been leaked in the past hour are real,” Henderson wrote. “I’m not sure why the leaker has decided to capture the exact same shots (although the heli shot is a few frames out) but the screen grabs where [sic] likely captured via zoom or something like that – Which explains the low quality. We’re not long away now. :)”

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Images from a supposed trailer leak

More than 50 images, supposedly from a leaked Battlefield 6 trailer, leaked on May 24. Unfortunately, because the depths of the internet thrive on trolling, they’re all branded with the “lol guy” meme. So it’s a bit difficult to make out what we’re seeing in the images, posted to Imgur.

The album shows off the same island image we saw in the previous leak, plus a number of shots of soldiers being shot at. We also see what appears to be a robotic dog, like the infamous Boston Dynamics bots. The rocket from the first image can be seen blasting off into the sky, rocket flames burning up the ground beneath. Unfortunately it looks like no one’s visiting the moon anytime soon, as the rocket is misfired — or maybe struck by enemy fire — and shoots into the adjacent tower.

These images reinforce the rumor that Battlefield 6 will have a near-future theme, eschewing the previous World War 1 and 2 motifs and returning to something more resembling Battlefield 3 or 4.

More video footage

A TikTok video (first spotted by VG247) previously teased supposed footage of Battlefield 6, but PC Gamer reports that the footage is not from any official trailer, and was never intended to represent the game to the public. Odds are it could simply be internal footage shared at EA and developer DICE, or footage compiled mid-development, before final revisions are made.

The TikTok video appears to have since been taken down, but VG247 reports that footage of the previously seen robot dog appears. It also includes first-person footage of the previously-leaked squad scene, along with a HUD that looks very familiar for Battlefield fans.

What we know for sure

So after all those leaks, what do we actually know as of late May? Well, EA debuted a few brief snippets of footage showing off some visual effects they’re using in Battlefield 6 during last year’s EA Play, including facial rendering, smoke effects, building collapses.  You can watch that in the video below.

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In a financial call earlier this month, EA confirmed that four studios are collaborating on Battlefield 6: EA DICE, Criterion, DICE LA, and EA Gothenburg. EA also confirmed Battlefield 6 will release for current and past-gen consoles as well as PC, with EA saying the game will take “full” advantage of current console hardware. EA is placing Battlefield’s release date in Q3, sometime between October and December.

You can follow our coverage of the next Battlefield as more details come to light. Another EA Play event is coming in 2021, and while EA hasn’t confirmed its presentation schedule, new information would certainly be welcome during the fan show.

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Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/medic for IGN.