Peter Sollett has been tapped to direct Warner Bros. film adaptation of Minecraft.
According to Variety, Sollett, whose previous projects include Raising Victor Vargas, Freeheld, and Five Feet High and Rising, will serve as both writer and director on the film.
Roy Lee, Jon Berg, and Minecraft’s development studio Mojang are set to produce, and Jon Spaihts will serve as executive producer.
Treyarch has a number of patches lined up for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 this month. The developer rolled out the first of these–which added new Featured playlists, among other things–earlier this week, and now it’s given fans a preview of what’s coming in the game’s next update.
Over on Reddit, the studio outlined what’s in store for Black Ops 4 next week. All three of the game’s modes will be receiving some attention. Zombies is set to get Gauntlets, which Treyarch describes as “curated 30-round challenges with unique rules for each round.” The developer is also holding a 115 Day Celebration Event in the mode from January 15-18. The event will be available on all platforms and offers double XP, weapon XP, and Nebulium Plasma.
For the Blackout battle royale mode, Treyarch will be implementing a new looting interface on consoles, making it easier to loot specific items. The developer says it will also hold two limited-time modes in Blackout next week. No further details have been provided yet, but Treyarch teases that it will reveal more info about the modes–as well as “more Blackout news”–soon.
Finally, in multiplayer mode, next week’s update will add both Elevation and Madagascar to the map rotation for those who have the Black Ops Pass. Treyarch says that future maps will be added to the full rotation “as they’re released.” The update will also bring new Featured playlists, as well as stability improvements and other fixes.
Later in the month, Treyarch will introduce League Play to Black Ops 4. This will make competitive multiplayer more akin to what’s seen in professional matches, with skill-based matchmaking putting participants into 50-player groupings.
The Witcher 3’s Geralt of Rivia is invading Capcom’s hit action RPG, Monster Hunter World, this year as part of the game’s next crossover event. The publisher has now confirmed that the famed Witcher is set to arrive in the PS4 and Xbox One versions as a free update, which rolls out early next month, on February 8.
The White Wolf finds himself in the New World after being transported there by a portal. Capcom hasn’t revealed many details yet about what the crossover will entail, but it says there will be new quests “with a unique flavor, blending the RPG mechanics of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt with Monster Hunter World’s game systems.”
Capcom also says Monster Hunter World’s Witcher collaboration was developed closely with CD Projekt Red, the studio behind The Witcher games. Among other things, Geralt’s original voice actor has been enlisted to provide new voice over work.
Geralt is hardly the only video game character to cross over with Monster Hunter World. Earlier this month, Capcom collaborated with Ubisoft to bring Assassin’s Creed content to the game. By completing a new event quest, players will be able to craft a new set of layered armor that makes them appear as Bayek, the protagonist of Assassin’s Creed Origins.
Before Geralt arrives, Capcom will kick off Monster Hunter World’s Appreciation Fest, an in-game event commemorating the title’s first anniversary. The celebration begins on January 26 and will bring back “almost all” previous event quests. It will also feature new gear, limited bounties, and “some very special” event quests.
Microsoft has quite the roster of exclusives coming to Xbox One in 2019. While we’re getting new sequels in some of its biggest franchises, the company also has several unexpected games and expansions queued up for this year. The biggest surprises were revealed at last year’s E3, which included Cuphead DLC and–wait for it–Battletoads. Yes, those Battletoads.
Ori and the Will of the Wisps is also set to release, likely bringing with it even more difficult platforming challenges to overcome. And after several delays, the long-awaited Crackdown 3 is finally releasing this February. If you weren’t following it before, Phoenix Point is another noteworthy standout you should keep on your radar; more details on those games in the slides below.
Compared to 2018, Xbox One players have a lot of exciting games to look forward to. Of course, there’s likely to be plenty of more Xbox One exclusives coming this year, so be sure to check back often as we update this feature with the latest games as they’re announced. For a more general overview of what’s coming to Xbox One this year, check out our feature highlighting the biggest Xbox One games coming in 2019.
Which Xbox One exclusives do you want to play the most? Shout your enthusiasm in the comments section below.
When Deadly Class debuts on Syfy–it’s already available online–you might find the level of graphic content in the series to be a little surprising. After all, this show is adapted from a graphic novel about a high school for assassins, the training ground for contract killers. With subject matter like that, you might be expecting gunfights left and right, with blood splattered on the walls.
Deadly Class, though, isn’t the ultraviolent playground you might think it is. Yes, there are still plenty of fight sequences and based on the first three episodes made available to the press, some heinous kills. However, if you’re walking into this series expecting the type of violence you might see on a show like DC Universe’s Titans, it’s time to temper your expectations. That’s not what Deadly Class is attempting to be. Instead, it’s carving out its own place in the crowded world of comic book adaptations, where what’s far more interesting than the violence on display is seeing the toll is takes on the characters forces to participate in it.
“In this show, we tell stories about the cost of violence,” Luke Tennie, who plays Willie, told GameSpot during a visit to the show’s set. “We are not glorified. It’s not casual. If there is a loss of life on our show, we see everything about the price. We don’t spend time on blood and gore, and we don’t glorify the violence.”
That’s a price that will vary, depending on the student that finds themself in the middle of it. While it may bring certain characters joy, there are others enrolled in King’s Dominion Atelier of the Deadly Arts that struggle with its murderous teachings. “[Marcus] just really wants friends and a family and that’s what he’s creating over here,” star Benjamin Wadsworth explained of his character, a newcomer at the school. “But he does not like violence. When he was on the streets he saw that all the time. He saw homeless guys beat up women. He saw money stolen. He’s forced to get in these violent situations and he personally gets to feel the ramifications of violence… And it kind of teaches everyone at the school when we do this stuff it’s gonna affect us physically and mentally.”
Given his outlook on this world he’s being immersed in, Marcus quickly finds an ally in Willie. While the leader of the Final World Order clique may present himself as a stone-cold killer, the truth is quite a bit different. “He hates it. No one knows he does, and the only time he opens up is with Marcus, and that’s something you find in the comics right off the bat between Willie and Marcus,” Tennie admitted.
Then, of course, there’s those who don’t necessarily love or hate the terrible acts they’re learning to commit. There are some, like punk rock outcast Billy (Liam Jones), who simply don’t know any other way of living. “From a very young age, he’s dealt with violence outside of his school,” the actor said, referring to his character’s past in an abusive home. “If all of that violence was for nothing, it would be really hard for him to take. So I think he’s trying to harness what he’s had to deal with.”
In truth, much of the way these characters react to the violence is pulled straight from the comics. With Rick Remender, the writer of the comic book series by Image, serving as one of the showrunners on Deadly Class, this is an adaptation that sticks very closely to its source material.
However, when looking at the more violent aspects of the show, there is one major change being made to the source material. The series is set in 1987, but the creative team behind it is sensitive to the world of 2019. Though this is an academy for budding assassins, you will never see guns used as weapons on school grounds.
“When I first cooked this up six, seven years ago, the amount of school shootings, whatever’s going on in our society, whatever this f***ing meltdown is, makes it abundantly clear to me as we’re developing this, that I don’t want to see a gun in the school,” Remender said. That’s not to say you won’t see guns anywhere in the series, but they won’t be brandished in the halls of King’s Dominion, which is a change from the comic. The explanation given within the show is that Master Lin, the headmaster of King’s Dominion played by Benedict Wong, loathes firearms and sees them as a tool of the weak.
Instead, viewers will see a lot more hand-to-hand combat and the student body finding more creative ways of expressing themselves through violence, whether it’s a through Lana Candor’s expert use of a katana or María Gabriela de Faría doing some serious damage to police officers using bladed fans in the role of Maria. And truthfully, that’s far more interesting to watch than someone swinging around a pistol anyway.
Deadly Class premieres on Syfy on Wednesday, January 16.
