The first trailer for the new Mark Wahlberg action movie Spenser Confidential has arrived, and it promises to be a high-octane action-comedy buddy cop movie.
Wahlberg stars as Spenser, a former Boston police officer who is “better known for making trouble than solving it.” After getting out of prison, Spenser plans to leave Boston forever. Except his old boxing coach Henry (Oscar-winner Alan Arkin) convinces him to stay and train a new fighter, Hawk (Winston Duke). The drama continues to unfold as a pair of Spenser’s former police partners are murdered, and Spenser and Hawk try to get to the bottom of it.
The movie also stars Iliza Shlesinger as Spenser’s ex-girlfriend and Bokeem Woodbine, with Marc Maron and even the rapper Post Malone rounding out the cast. It’s directed by Peter Berg, who also directed Wahlberg in Lone Survivor, Deepwater Horizon, and Patriots Day.
This is just the latest edition of the Spenser franchise, as ABC produced a series called Spenser: For Hire in the ’80s with Robert Urich in the title role. The series is based on the Ace Atkins novel series Wonderland.
Spenser Confidential brings Wahlberg back to his hometown of Boston. He has starred in numerous Boston-set movies over the years, including The Departed and The Fighter, both of which earned the actor Academy Award nominations. He also starred in Patriots Day, a film that told the story of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the ensuing aftermath.
Post Malone in the new Mark Wahlberg movie, Spenser Confidential
Spenser Confidential starts streaming on Netflix on March 6.
With Star Trek: Picard’s debut coming on Thursday, January 23, actress Jeri Ryan has offered some insight on where her character Seven of Nine has been since we last saw her on Star Trek: Voyager in 2001, as well as her surprising feelings about Patrick Stewart’s legendary Admiral Jean-Luc Picard.
In an interview with IGN, Ryan explained that dark times have overtaken the galaxy, and Seven has seen a lot of “dark crap” in the last 20 years. Watch the full interview above or read on for excerpts from it.
Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Picard
“Seven I think holds Starfleet and the Federation in large part responsible for much of it,” she said. “The universe is a mess and I think she initially sees Picard as a representation of that. She’s been working … with sort of a group of freedom fighters called the Fenris Rangers who are trying to keep some semblance of order in the mess that is the galaxy.”
It’s not clear right now what the Fenris Rangers are, but Fenris is a wolf in Norse mythology, and we know the Picard show is also focusing on the plight of the Romulans after their sun was destroyed in the 2009 Star Trek film. Romulus of course also takes its name from mythology, the Roman tale of Romulus and Remus who were nursed as infants by a wolf.
The inclusion of Seven in Picard is interesting since she actually comes from Voyager and has never interacted with Jean-Luc onscreen before. But the two do have something in common: They are both humans who were assimilated by the Borg in the past, and eventually freed from that cybernetic collective.
“This is the first time that Seven and Picard actually meet,” says Ryan. “They know each other by reputation. And as I’ve said before, Seven’s not on the ‘Oh, he’s a god’ bandwagon I think initially when she meets him because she holds him partially responsible for what Starfleet has done in her view.”
Executive producer Alex Kurtzman explained why the writing staff decided to bring Seven into the show.
“We had a rule on the show which was that we did not want to just bring back legacy characters to bring them back,” he said. “They had to come back because the story could not tell itself without those characters. There were two things that came to mind immediately with Picard. When you think of Picard you think of his relationship with Data and you think of the Borg. … Seven and Picard have never been onscreen together before. So that was a really interesting opportunity, and what they share, even though they’ve never spoken, is they were both assimilated by the Borg. So they would obviously both be haunted by that element of their lives. We certainly know that both of them have been individually, and now what does it mean for them to see that in each other. Is it too painful? Is it a little like staring into the sun? Is it comforting? Those are really interesting questions to ask.”
Where will this all lead for Jean-Luc Picard and Seven of Nine? We’ll begin to find out when Star Trek: Picard Season 1 debuts on January 23.
Sonic the Hedgehog is gearing up for a big 2020. Sega has announced (according to translations from Gematsu) the Sonic 2020 project, which will see new Sonic news being announced on the 20th of every month this year.
The first announcement is a bit of a cheat, as the Sonic 2020 project itself is January’s Sonic news. February is already going to be a big month for the blue blur, with the Sonic the Hedgehog movie finally arriving in cinemas on February 14.
Sega has celebrated by releasing various wallpapers, banners, and icons based on Sonic, including a Twitter header image for fans to use. It’s not yet clear what sort of news we’ll see each month, and whether we’ll see any new games being announced.
Epic’s hugely popular battle royale game Fortnite is rolling out a significant change for its competitive tournaments in 2020. The company is attempting to crack down on cheating by taking action against players who “signal” each other while playing in official tournaments.
In a blog post, Epic said it discovered last year that players were sending and receiving signals during tournaments as a method of cheating. Players on opposing sides would swing their pick axe, perform an emote, toss toys, or simply jump to give another player a heads up.
This year, Epic will take action against “any kind of in-game communication.” This includes but is not limited to, pick-axe swinging, emoting, toy tossing, and jumping.”
Players who are caught signaling will receive a “collusion” penalty. Those who break the rules again and again may face harsher penalties, Epic said.
Epic said it takes competitive integrity seriously, and reminded players they can report suspicious behavior through Fortnite’s in-game tools. Additionally, players can reach out to Epic through the company’s player support team.
One of the world’s most popular Fortnite players, Ninja, said in a tweet that he understands Epic’s position, but he also remarked that the new system is potentially problematic. He specifically took issue with how jumping could be an actionable offense.
It’s worth mentioning that Epic’s own statement makes it clear that any action will only be taken following a review. Simply jumping around, if it’s harmless and not related to signalling, won’t land you in any trouble, it seems.
I can see where epic is coming from, as a spectator seeing teams and players rotating and not shooting and swinging pick axes can seem odd but with no rotation items at all professional players understand when the time to fight actually is. Also, jumping? Best way to dodge snipes pic.twitter.com/NenfqxdK12
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is getting a demo, letting you try out the game before you decide if you want to buy it. The game, which follows up on 3D platformer Yooka-Laylee, is a 2D adventure, released in October 2019. The demo will be available for free.
The demo, which was announced on Twitter, will come to Steam on January 23, then PS4 and Switch on January 30. An Xbox One date is yet to be announced.
Good news! A free demo of Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is on the way! Steam: 23rd Jan PS4/Nintendo Switch: 30th Jan Xbox: TBA If you’re a try before you buy kinda guy (or gal/pal), this is a great opportunity for you to get stuck in! pic.twitter.com/SVB0tIVdRa
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair received a 6/10 in GameSpot’s review, and reviewer Alessandro Barbosa wrote that “The Impossible Lair is definitely a better attempt at capturing the magic of platformers than Yooka-Laylee’s first crack at it, but it’s still not remarkable.” It faired a bit better elsewhere, and has a Metacritic average score of 82 on PS4.
Developer Playtonic Games was rumored to be working on a Banjo-Kazooie revival last year, but that has been debunked.
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The Witcher TV show’s boss, Lauren Hissrich, has responded to the fan campaign for Star Wars actor Mark Hamill to play Vesemir in the upcoming second season of the Netflix show. She told IGN that she was blown away when Hamill tweeted about The Witcher, and she admitted that Hamill “has always been of interest” for potentially being cast in the show.
However, it’s too soon to say if Hamill will actually play Vesemir–or any other role–in the forthcoming sophomore season of The Witcher.
“Mark has always been of interest to me and interest to the project,” Hissrich said. “We have not contacted his agent yet because we’re not casting the role quite yet, but that being said, I am loving what’s happening on the internet. And I’m loving all of the fan reaction to it. Obviously, we’ve seen what a huge fanbase The Witcher has, and to add that to a Star Wars fanbase… it makes my mind explode a little bit.”
In March 2018, Hamill said he had no idea what The Witcher is but he agreed with one fan who said he should play Vesemir. Hissrich described Vesemire as fatherly, wise, sprightly, and ancient, which seems to match up with Hamill’s Luke Skywalker character from Star Wars.
CD Projekt Red, the developer of the Witcher games (the show is based on the books, though) even jumped in with a Photoshopped image of Hamill’s face on Vesemir’s body.
Cyberpunk 2077 is getting its own line of Funko Pop figurines. They were shown off for the first time at the London Toy Fair 2020, as reported by Game Informer, and reimagine some characters from the game through the familiar Funko aesthetic.
There are four figurines coming–two of V, the protagonist, in both their male and female variants, and two of Johnny Silverhands, the character played by Keanu Reeves. They’re pictured below.
These Funko Pops are due to release on April 16, which was, for a long time, the proposed release date of Cyberpunk 2077. However, the game has been delayed until September, meaning that these figurines will beat the game to market.
Funko Pop has, to date, released well over 8000 character figurines, many of them based on characters from video games. Here are our picks for the best Funko Pops of 2019. If you’re not a fan, you might enjoy our list of the ugliest Funko Pops available.
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Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Super Smash Bros Ultimate, has a reputation as a very hard worker. In 2019, however, it seems that he was able to find plenty of time to play other games.
Sakurai has tweeted about the recently released PlayStation infograph, which shows you how many PS4 games you played in the year, and which ones you played the most. Sakurai did not reveal his hour counts, but it turns out he played a lot of PS4 games in 2019.
Sakurai loaded up 242 PS4 games throughout the year, and the tweet ponders what the number would be if Switch and PC games were included as well. It’s an interesting insight into a developer who is heavily associated with Nintendo–it seems Sakurai is partial to PlayStation as well. Unfortunately, we don’t have a list of the games–we imagine a lot of them were fighting games.
Masahiro Sakurai has certainly more than earned the spare time he has outside of his continued work on Super Smash Bros Ultimate–the game is now the best-selling fighting game of all time, and the second-highest selling game on Switch. The final fighter of the game’s first DLC Fighter’s Pass was recently announced–it’s Byleth from Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and they’re coming on January 28.
Between now and the end of 2021, Super Smash Bros Ultimate will receive six additional fighters, so work on the game is ongoing.
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