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HBO’s drama series Euphoria, which stars Zendaya, is coming back. The network has confirmed that two additional episodes are on the way, one of which is set during Christmas. However, these appear to be one-off episodes and not the start of a Season 2 properly.

The first of the new episodes will air on Sunday, December 6, and it will be available on HBO and to stream through HBO Max. This episode is titled “Trouble Don’t Last Always” and it picks up with Zendaya’s Rue celebrating Christmas while dealing with a recent relapse. The episode was written and directed by Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, and it also features Colman Domingo, but that’s all HBO had to say. The network did, however, release a teaser image for the episode; check it out below.

The second episode remains more of a mystery–HBO will announce its title and release date at some point later on. The network also confirmed that the episodes were film in adherence with COVID-19 safety guidelines.

Euphoria made a splash when it premiered in 2019, with critics celebrating Zendaya’s performance in particular. Zendaya recently earned an Emmy award for Outstanding Lead Actress In A Drama Series for it, and this was one of three Emmy wins that the show notched at the awards show.

In addition to these special episodes of Euphoria, Levinson and Zendaya teamed up again for a movie that was filmed in secret and recently sold to Netflix for $30 million.

After some smaller releases like Call of Duty Heroes, Activision made a big push to make Call of Duty Mobile the definitive Call of Duty experience on mobile–and it seems to have worked. Released in October 2019, the game has been a huge success, driven in part by its ever-expanding lineup of content.

The game, which is developed by TiMi Studios in China, has reached more than 300 million downloads worldwide and has expanded its content significantly. The game launched with 11 multiplayer maps, and it now has 23; it had one multiplayer mode at release, and now has 27. Some of the other first-year stats include the battle royale map increasing in size by about 50%, while there are now a whopping 182 playable characters in the game.

GameSpot recently had the chance to speak with Call of Duty Mobile GM Matt Lewis about the first year of Call of Duty Mobile. In the interview, Lewis spoke about the game’s first-year achievements, how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has impacted development, what’s being done to combat cheaters, and lots more. Lewis did not, however, confirm any plans to bring back Zombies, a fan-favorite mode that was removed earlier this year.

You can check out the full interview below. Call of Duty Mobile is currently available on Android and iOS as a free-to-play game supported by microtransactions. For more, check out everything new in the Anniversary update, which is the biggest in the game’s history.

Call of Duty Mobile has seemingly been a very successful release for Activision across a number of metrics. Now that you’re about a year out from release, can you reflect on the first year and what you’ve learned and accomplished?

The Call of Duty: Mobile team has accomplished just an incredible amount in the last 12 months. Our goal from the start has been simple: make an authentic and AAA-quality Call of Duty game that plays great on a phone. Over the last year we’ve stayed true to this vision as we moved from one part of the game to the next making things better and better. We spent a lot of energy improving the feel of playing a single match. We’ve been obsessing over the game’s technical performance and general availability. Perhaps more than anything we’ve been determined to up the quality and volume of content updates we give to players.

The CoD fanbase is known for being outspoken and opinionated about the direction of the series. Can you speak about what kind of feedback you’ve received from the community for CoD: Mobile, and how you’ve gone about responding to their feedback?

The CoD fanbase is known for being outspoken about the direction of the series, and we love that. When you mess up, you hear about it, and when you get it right, they let you know too. Fair trade! Rather than run from this we embrace it. Each week we actively source feedback across a few different forums and sites both to share info on upcoming updates and to get feedback on stuff we recently did. These sessions are critical for us – if you’re a player reading this now, keep talking to us!

“The CoD fanbase is known for being outspoken about the direction of the series, and we love that. When you mess up, you hear about it, and when you get it right, they let you know too.” — Matt Lewis, Call of Duty Mobile GM.

With Black Ops Cold War releasing soon, do you have plans for cross-promotion or integration with that game in any capacity?

We do have plans for some rewarding cross game experiences, one of which has already launched. Mobile players who played the Black Ops Cold War Beta on the same Activision account got a free Adler operator skin in Mobile.

How has the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic impacted the development of Call of Duty: Mobile, and what have you learned about your teams and processes in the process?

COVID-19 has proven a quite challenging obstacle to making Call of Duty: Mobile. At the end of the day games are a creative endeavor, and it’s hard to be creative in isolation–you need people to bound ideas off of and to inspire you. This is hard on Zoom! But our teams are amazing and it’s inspiring to go to work every day.

Is there an update you can provide regarding the Zombies mode for CoD Mobile and when it may be re-introduced?

We don’t have an update for Zombies now, but Zombies isn’t something we’ve forgotten about. Recently our focus has been on making sure Multiplayer feels world class, and then on improving our Battle Royale mode, first by adding the Alcatraz map from Black Ops 4 and then by polishing and building up our original Isolated map.

How are you approaching the instances of cheating/hacking/exploits in CoD: Mobile. Can you talk about your efforts to combat negative behavior?

Call of Duty: Mobile uses proprietary technology to identify and proactively ban hackers before they ruin others’ experiences. We don’t want to go into detail around how but we take fair play very seriously.

What can you tell us about what’s coming up next for CoD: Mobile in the future?

We are so excited with where Call of Duty: Mobile is right now, and over the next months we plan on making the game even better. That means new maps and modes, new characters and weapons, and new features to take social, competitive gameplay to some totally new places.

In this video, Persia talks about P.T. not being downloadable on the PS5. Since it cannot be downloaded, that means it also won’t be backwards compatible. PT was removed from the PlayStation Store in 2015 and Silent Hills fans are still clamoring for a reboot 5 years later, but back in March, Konami confirmed that it’s just not happening.

Persia also talks about the PS5 fan being optimized over time. Sony will collect data from the fan’s Accelerated Processing Unit, allowing the fan to run at different speeds depending on what’s necessary for whatever game you’re playing at that time.

And lastly, Persia talks about the Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War beta being extended for another 24 hours to all players on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. PS4 players don’t need PlayStation Plus to try it, but you do need Xbox Live Gold for the Xbox version and a Battle.net account for PC. All attachments are unlocked and there’s now Double XP. The beta has Team Deathmatch, Hardpoint, Kill Confirmed, Control, and the new Combined Arms and Dirty Bomb modes. Black Ops Cold War will be available on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Series X, Series S, and PC on November 13.

This is your Save State for Monday, October 19th.

Harrison Ford is no stranger to playing captains and commanders, but film fans are in for a whole new take on the idea when they sit down for The Miserable Adventures of Burt Squire Aboard the Horn High Yo, in which Ford will star alongside Ed Helms.

Ford (Star Wars, Indiana Jones) and Helms (The Hangover, The Office) are attached to star in the indie film together. Helms, in the grip of a midlife crisis, steps onto Ford’s boat on what he hopes will be a dream vacation. Instead, he and Ford’s “unhinged captain” find themselves shipwrecked together in the Atlantic Ocean. It sounds like The Lighthouse, but, you know, fun.

The indie film’s script comes via a screenplay by Ben Bolea. Mickey Liddell and Pete Shilaimon of LD Entertainment will produce alongside Kim Zubick. LD’s Michael Glassman will executive produce with STXfilm’s Drew Simon and Spencer Ela. No one is attached to direct just yet.

“There’s no one better than Ed Helms to play an everyday guy who gets saddled with every comedic misfortune life could throw his way,” said STXfilms chairman Adam Fogelson in the film’s press release. “Harrison is going to create yet another memorable and iconic character as an unhinged sea captain. Instead of a road-trip comedy, we can’t wait to see these unlikely buddies in this seafaring comedy.”

The press release says Burt Squire’s tale is based on a true story, but the internet seems to come up empty with connections to any actual events. Regardless, the notion of Ford playing a seacaptain of questionable judgment sounds like a good time.

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Back to the Future co-writer Bob Gale has shared some new insight on the iconic film’s original ending and opening scenes. The famous and memorable ending to Back to the Future, where Doc Brown makes a last-ditch effort to power up the clock tower to help Marty get back to the future, was almost completely different. Writer Bob Gale told Collider that he and writer-director Robert Zemeckis had originally wrote an ending that involved a refrigerator time machine and blowing up a city. And that’s not all–Gale also revealed the original opening to Back to the Future did not involve Doc Brown’s laboratory at all.

Here is Gale talking about the original ending:

“The idea [was] that the DeLorean was nuclear powered, literally they needed to harness nuclear energy to send the time machine back to the future. Bob [Zemeckis] and I had seen The Atomic Café documentary, a movie called The Atomic Kid which we pay homage to on the marquee of the town theater in 1955–one of the most perverse movies ever made… We were obsessed with the idea of, ‘Hey wouldn’t it be cool if we could recreate one of these towns and blow it up?’ So we wrote this elaborate sequence in and in the original version, the time machine was built into a refrigerator which was a time chamber. And that was where Marty was gonna be when the nuclear blast went off.”

They ended up scrapping these scenes due to, you guessed it, budget cuts. The studio asked for $1 million in cuts, and it was determined that the idea of building an entire town (only to blow it up) was a good place to save the money. The clock tower sequence was shot at a comparatively less expensive backlot.

“Over a weekend we spent time walking around on the backlot going back and forth to our offices, and we came up with the whole clock tower sequence,” Gale said.

Their original idea for Back to the Future’s ending didn’t get completely lost in time, however, as Gale pointed out that Back to the Future producer Steven Spielberg was inspired by it for the Indiana Jones movie Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In that film, Indiana Jones survives a nuclear blast inside a refrigerator.

As for the original opening, Gale said the studio asked for additional budget cuts after they parted ways with the first Marty actor, Eric Stolz, and replaced him with Michael J. Fox. Due to this, they scrapped plans for al elaborate opening scene showing Marty in detention and setting off fire sprinklers to escape. This scene involved a lot of logistics, and the set wasn’t even finished, so the production team decided to go with the opening we all know and love with the long tracking shot showing Doc Brown’s laboratory.

Back to the Future is coming back soon with a 4K trilogy that releases on October 21. Included in the package are a series of special features, one of which shows Ben Stiller’s audition tape for Marty.

Dawson, Joey, Pacey, and the whole Dawson’s Creek crew are heading to Netflix, and if you don’t wanna wait, don’t worry–the premiere is less than two weeks out. All 6 seasons and 128 episodes will hit Netflix on November 1, but they’ll be missing one crucial thing: the theme song. When producer Sony licensed Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait” for the show, they licensed it for broadcast only and didn’t ante up for the rights to use it elsewhere.

Netflix is beholden to broadcast rights just like every other channel or streaming service, and they know what people are expecting from a show and decided to nip it in the bud in their tweet. Long-time fans of the show will know that the song didn’t appear on home video releases, or on the show’s current home at Hulu, so this is nothing new. But with Netflix’s gigantic audience, many people will discover this travesty for the first time on November 11.

Honestly, those of us tuning in to re-live the show, which aired from 1998 to 2003 on the WB network–now known as The CW–will probably miss the theme song exactly once. After that first episode, Netflix will shovel you into that endless Next Episode loop, and we’ll be jumping into each episode right after the theme song.

That first time, though, what you’ll hear is the song “Run Like Mad” by Jann Arden, which appears on international releases of the show. In 2018, Paula Cole expressed interest in a HuffPost essay in seeing the song come back to the show, disappointed at “being erased from the association with Dawson’s Creek due to (what feels like to me) corporate greed.”

Dawson’s Creek, like NBC’s Community, was originally produced by Sony during its run on the WB network. It’s unclear if Dawson’s Creek, like Community, will remain available on Hulu when it hits Netflix on November 1. At least James Van Der Beek won’t have to hide under a table anymore when the Dawson’s Creek theme plays.

To promote the upcoming western release of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Sega’s Australian distribution partner Five Star Games has created what it’s calling the “world’s most expensive bowl of ramen.”

Five Star worked with the Sydney-based ramen favorite Gumshara for this unique promo. The bowl of ramen is filled with lobster, pork, and noodles, and it carries an estimated value of $400 AUD ($282 USD).

This special edition bowl is called the “Rags to Riches” ramen, and it’s meant to symbolize Yakuza protagonist Ichiban Kasuga’s story in Like a Dragon.

Specifically, each bowl was made using 15kg of lobster and pork bones, and Mori Higashida of Gumshara crafted the bowls in his kitchen. The dish also has a full lobster in it, complete with a head made to look like a dragon.

“Being given a chance to imagine such an over-the-top ramen dish has been fantastic, and I’m proud of what we’ve created,” Higashida said in a statement. “My wife is actually a fan of the Yakuza series of videogames, so I’m familiar with the craziness of the game and hope to have captured its essence in our own way!”

Here is the full ingredient list for the Rages to Riches ramen:

• 5kg high-end lobster heads
• 10kg quality pork bone
• 1x full lobster: Tempura lobster tail and golden head fashioned as a dragon head for garnish
• Noodles
• Traditional ramen garnishes of soft-boiled seasoned egg, bamboo shoots, spring onions,
• Golden nori

One person in New South Wales will get to eat (and hopefully enjoy!) the Rags to Riches ramen as part of an Xbox ANZ sweepstakes. The winner will also get a custom Like a Dragon noren and a copy of the game on Xbox. 10 runner-ups, who don’t need to live in Sydney but must be in Australia, will get the noren and a copy of the game.

You can follow the Xbox ANZ Twitter channel from today through November 10, which is when Like a Dragon releases, to enter for a chance to win.

For more on Like a Dragon, check out GameSpot editor Michael Higham’s recent preview of the game’s Xbox Series X edition, “Yakuza: Like A Dragon Is An Absolute Gift.”

Now Playing: Yakuza: Like a Dragon – The Quest Begins Trailer

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