Star Wars: How J.J. Abrams Convinced [Spoiler] to Return

Warning: this article contains major spoilers for Star Wars – The Rise of Skywalker!

Amid all the big surprises in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, perhaps none is more welcome or unexpected than the return of Harrison Ford as Han Solo. Even more surprising, it turns out director J.J. Abrams didn’t have to work very hard to convince the notoriously Star Wars-wary Ford to reprise that iconic role one last time.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Abrams revealed all it took was a simple phone call. “Well, I called him and I said, ‘We want to have a scene in the film between Kylo Ren and his father, would you do it?’ And he said, ‘Okay.’”

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CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher Gets Netflix ‘Toss A Coin To Your Witcher’ Mod

While Netflix’s The Witcher is solely based on the books, the TV series and CD Projekt Red’s video game adaptation have now crossed over in an unexpected way. A popular song from The Witcher TV series can be seen in Geralt of Rivia’s first adventure, 2007’s The Witcher, thanks to a new mod.

You can add “Toss A Coin To Your Witcher,” a song performed by the show’s version of Dandelion at the end of the second episode, to the original Witcher PC game by downloading Hubert Wiza’s mod from Nexus Mods. Once installed, it appears as an in-game cutscene during The Witcher’s third chapter. The song replaces Dandelion’s performance at The New Narakort Inn.

The Witcher’s main campaign is lengthy and getting to the third chapter just to see the cutscene could take a while, so Wiza uploaded the full performance to YouTube for your convenience. You can check it out below.

This mod really capitalizes on The Witcher games’ recent resurgence in popularity. Since The Witcher TV adaptation debuted on December 20, the games have seen huge player spikes on Steam. CDPR’s third installment in particular, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, had more people playing than ever before since its 2015 launch. Though the show and the game remain separate entities, CDPR and author Andrzej Sapkowski recently settled a royalties dispute that “confers new rights” to the developer.

Prior to Netflix’s The Witcher receiving less than favorable reviews from some critics, the show had been picked up for a second season. In our The Witcher Season 1 review, we said, “If you’re utterly devoted to the world of The Witcher, you’ll certainly enjoy the familiar aesthetic and characters, but beyond that, this series is hard to recommend.”

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Arrow Spinoff: Canaries Backdoor Pilot Description Revealed

With the CW’s Arrow entering its final few episodes, the Queen family still has a lot to offer Star City — and so do the Canaries. The CW has revealed the description for the Arrow penultimate episode, which will serve as a backdoor pilot for the new Canaries spinoff series.

Reported by Deadline, the Canaries backdoor pilot, titled “Green Arrow and the Canaries,” will feature Katherine McNamara’s Mia Smoke and will be set in Star City in the year 2040. Airing on the CW on January 21, Mia’s life will be interrupted by Katie Cassidy’s Laurel Lance and Juliana Harkavy’s Dinah Drake, who need Mia’s help tracking down a kidnapping victim.

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A New Batch of Mandalorian Funko POPs Are Up for Preorder

It’s taken longer than you might expect, but official Mandalorian toys are starting to go up for preorder. You can preorder Baby Yoda plushes and Funko POPs (if you can find them in stock), plus a line of absurdly adorable Baby Yoda figures from Hasbro. If that’s not enough, a new batch of Mandalorian Funko POP figures has just become available to preorder. Most of them will be available on February 17, which is sooner than the Baby Yoda figures will arrive. Here they are.

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James Gunn Purportedly Confirms He Passed on Directing Superman Movie

Apparently, James Gunn has confirmed that he passed on directing a new Superman movie for Warner Bros. in favor of taking on The Suicide Squad.

This information should be taken with a grain of salt because it was revealed in a now-deleted Instagram story that was screen-captured and posted on reddit. The post (via Newsarama) allegedly written by Gunn read: “As has been reported many times, DC offered me whatever film I wanted to do, including some sort of Superman movie (not specifically Man of Steel 2 as I’ve seen reported). I chose The Suicide Squad because it’s one of my favorite properties in the world. It’s the story I wanted to tell more than any other.”

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The Rise of Skywalker Has Deleted Scenes Explaining How Palpatine Survived

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker leaves fans with some lingering questions, including a few that can only be answered if you pick up the recently released Visual Dictionary. But when it comes to one of the movie’s biggest mysteries – how Emperor Palpatine survived the events of Return of the Jedi – the answer is locked away in deleted footage.

In an interview with HuffPost (via CBR), editor Maryanne Brandon reveals Episode IX was originally supposed to have shed more light on Palpatine’s return. But ultimately, the scenes dealing with the hows and whys of Palpatine’s return were trimmed in order to prevent fans from being bombarded with exposition.

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Netflix Announces Most Popular 2019 Movies And TV Shows, And The Top Slot Is Weird

Netflix has released a list of its most popular titles released in 2019, and some of the entries on the list might surprise you. While major releases like Stranger Things 3 and The Irishman make the cut, along with box office smashes like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and The Incredibles 2, the most popular title of the year is going to come as a shock.

Murder Mystery, the comedy starring Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, takes the top slot on Netflix for 2019. Does this mean it was actually the most-watched movie on the streaming service, though? Not necessarily. As The Hollywood Reporter points out, Netflix determines popularity based on how many people watch at least two minutes of a movie or show within the first 28 days of release. The streaming giant, however, does not release statistics showing how many people actually finished any given title.

Other movies that made the list include Michael Bay’s 6 Underground, Triple Frontier, and Wreck-It Ralph 2. On the TV side of things, Stranger Things 3 was joined by The Witcher, Umbrella Academy, Season 3 of You, When They See Us, and 13 Reasons Why, among other shows. You can take a look at the full Top 10 below.

Most popular 2019 releases

1. Murder Mystery
2. Stranger Things 3
3. 6 Underground
4. The Incredibles 2
5. The Irishman
6. The Witcher
7. Triple Frontier
8. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
9. The Umbrella Academy
10. The Highwaymen

Most popular 2019 TV series releases

1. Stranger Things 3
2. The Witcher
3. The Umbrella Academy
4. Dead to Me
5. You: Season 2
6. When They See Us
7. Unbelievable
8. Sex Education
9. 13 Reasons Why
10. Raising Dion

Most popular 2019 movie releases

1. Murder Mystery
2. 6 Underground
3. The Incredibles 2
4. The Irishman
5. Triple Frontier
6. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
7. The Highwaymen
8. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
9. Wreck-It Ralph 2
10. Secret Obsession

Now, with a new year underway, there’s even more original content coming from the service. Make sure to take a look at our most anticipated Netflix exclusives of 2020–and what’s coming and going from the service in January–to plan your binging accordingly.

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Fortnite Workshop, Crackshot’s Cabin, And Mr. Polar Locations Guide

Fortnite‘s holiday-themed Winterfest event is wrapping up soon, but there’s still a little time to complete its challenges and snag yourself some special rewards. One challenge that may give you some trouble asks you to visit the Workshop, Crackshot’s Cabin, and Mr. Polar’s Artisanal Ice. If you have no idea where any of those places are, don’t worry; we’ve put together this map and guide to show you where to go.

What Are The Locations You Need To Visit?

As the challenge states, you’ll need to head to three different buildings to complete this mission, and they can be tricky to find if you’re not already familiar with the layout of Fortnite’s island. Fortunately, each building is near a named location, so they shouldn’t be too hard to track down.

The Workshop is located southeast of Holly Hedges, on the way to Slurpy Swamp; Crackshot’s Cabin is east of Eye Land, the island that’s dead in the center of Fortnite’s map; and Mr. Polar’s Artisanal Ice is in the northeastern corner of Dirty Docks. You can see where all three buildings are located on the map below.

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How To Complete The Challenge

Now that we know where all three locations are, all you need to do is make your way to each one and you’ll complete the challenge. You don’t need to visit all three within a single match, so the quickest way to complete the challenge would be to head to one, get yourself eliminated, then jump into another match and go to another one until you’ve visited all of them.

Fortnite’s Winterfest challenges will only be around a few more days, so you’ll need to act quickly if you’re hoping to complete them and unlock the special Winterfest rewards. You can see the full list of challenges, along with all of our maps and guides for this season’s trickier missions, in our ongoing Fortnite Chapter 2 challenges roundup.

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Former Disney CEO Wasn’t A Fan Of Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker

Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker has proven to be pretty divisive amongst Star Wars fans, and Disney’s former CEO can now be counted among the less-than-impressed. In his social media reaction to the film, Michael Eisner called Episode IX “an acceptable film” that “lacks emotion.”

Eisner went on to stack Rise Of Skywalker against Disney+’s The Mandalorian, which recently wrapped up its first season on the new streaming service, saying that the series’ showrunner Jon Favreau has cemented himself as the modern-day George Lucas.

Eisner is certainly not alone in his Rise Of Skywalker feelings. Our reviewer, Michael Rougeau, called Episode IX a “galactic disappointment” layered with “cloying, saccharine sentimentality.” In GameSpot’s official review, he wrote “In the end, it all feels simply empty. It should never be so clear to audiences that something in the filmmaking process has gone so terribly wrong–that the people who made the first film in a trilogy apparently didn’t bother to sketch out a plan for the second and third, and that the movies’ directors had visions for the series’ future that were so fundamentally at odds.”

The good news is, regardless of your Rise Of Skywalker feelings, the Star Wars bubble is far from busting. The Mandalorian has been renewed for a second season with Jon Favreau returning as showrunner, slated for release in the fall of 2020–there’s even the potential for some Skywalker Saga characters to make the jump from big to small screens, so you’ll definitely want to keep your eyes peeled. And if Baby Yoda and company aren’t enough to get you excited for the future of Star Wars, Disney+ also has its Obi-Wan and Cassian Andor streaming TV shows as well.

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