Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is reportedly being turned into a television show for the streaming service Hulu.Deadline is reporting that a television adaptation of the sci-fi comedy series is coming to the streaming service. Carlton Cuse (Lost, Locke & Key) is attached as showrunner and Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman) is a writer on the series.
We reached out to Hulu for verification, but the company declined to comment.
Everything Coming to Disney’s Streaming Service (So Far)
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy began as a radio series on BBC Radio 4, which premiered in 1978. Adams adapted the series into a novel in 1979, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was adapted into many different forms since, including a video game and a 2005 feature film.
The 2005 movie adaptation of the Hitchhiker’s Guide starred Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschannel, Bill Nighy, John Malkovich, Stephen Fry, and Alan Rickman.
Disney owns the IP rights to the Hitchhiker’s Guide, which would explain why the TV series is heading to Hulu. Disney acquired Hulu after purchasing stakes in the service from Fox and Comcast. Furthermore, the adaptation is being developed by ABC Signature, another Disney company.
Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. You can reach him on Twitter.
If you’re a fan of id Software games like Doom, Quake, or Rage, you’re probably aware that QuakeCon 2019 is about to kick off this week. The four-day convention, which will take place July 25-28 in Dallas, is one of the longest-running bring-your-own-computer gaming events in the world, drawing thousands of gamers every year to attend panels, compete in tournaments, and demo upcoming releases.
Naturally, the star of the show this year is Doom Eternal, which releases November 22, and attendees will get a first-hand look at the upcoming FPS and highly anticipated sequel to Doom (2016). But while the event’s 2019 tagline is “The Year of Doom,” there are plenty more games involved with QuakeCon than some people may realize. And for the vast majority of gamers who won’t be at the convention in Dallas this week, there are great deals to be had as retailers celebrate QuakeCon with huge sales on PS4, Xbox One, and PC games.
The QuakeCon sales this week expand to multiple Bethesda franchises, like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Wolfenstein, and Dishonored, with deals at various retailers like GameStop, Steam, and Fanatical as well as the PlayStation and Xbox stores. Notably, Rage 2 is down to $40 on Xbox One and PS4 ($27 on PC), and Doom Eternal is only $51.59 to pre-order on PC at Fanatical. Plus, Fallout 76 is only $15 at Amazon for both PS4 and Xbox One, and Prime members receive $15 back in reward credit afterward, essentially making the purchase free. The Amazon Prime deal ends after this Friday, July 26.
See more of the best QuakeCon game deals to take advantage of below!
Were you to encounter the Borg, unpredictability would be your friend; the Borg would be susceptible to any tactical strategy they haven’t previously seen.
Starfleet has designed weapons specifically to battle the Borg. The Defiant, for example, was one such starship; its phaser cannons rotated their frequencies so that the Borg could not adapt. But brute strength is not a long-term solution against such vast numbers.
The Borg’s confidence is their undoing. One of the Borg’s quirks is that they do not attack unless they see their targets as imminent threats. Borgs will often board ships or beam down to planets just to survey and scan the technology and biology; they will not appear aggressively hostile at first. And during this small window of opportunity, Starfleet crew members have boarded Borg cubes and walked around unencumbered. This is an excellent opportunity to gain tactical advantage before the fighting inevitably starts.
The Borg are particularly susceptible to tech-based attacks.The most successful ones have come from scenarios where Starfleet captured a drone, established a neural link with it, and compromised the Borg’s defense systems.
There have also been scenarios, suggested or acted upon, where Starfleet used drones or assimilated humans to upload viruses and malignant programs to the collective. These instances have only been possible, however, through a combination of specific circumstance and dumb luck, and they would be nearly impossible to replicate.
To say that Game of Thrones‘ final season was divisive amongst fans is the biggest understatement of 2019, but HBO President Casey Bloys still isn’t sweating the audience backlash. In fact, he says that the response to the events of the final season hasn’t changed the way the network is approaching the upcoming prequel series “at all” — which does make sense, if you consider that the new series has an entirely different creative team.The new series, which may or may not be called The Longest Night, comes from a concept that X-Men: First Class’ Jane Goldman developed with George R.R. Martin. Set 5,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones, the new series doesn’t creatively involve the flagship series’ showrunners David Benioff or D.B. Weiss, or executive producer Bryan Cogman, who is off working on Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series. (Though Cogman was originally conceptualizing a spinoff series, HBO did not move forward with it.)
The Game of Thrones prequel series’ pilot was shooting in Northern Ireland earlier this summer, and Bloys confirmed that “shooting has wrapped” during the HBO executive session at the 2019 summer TV Critics’ Association press tour. The new show stars Naomi Watts as its lead, and the cast includes Josh Whitehouse, Naomi Ackie, Denise Gough, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sheila Atim, Ivanno Jeremiah, Georgie Henley, Alex Sharp, and Toby Regbo. The pilot was directed by S.J. Clarkson.
“It looks really good. The cast was amazing,” said Bloys. “Jane and S.J. are busy in the edit room so I haven’t seen anything yet, but we’re looking forward to it.” The prequel series only got a pilot order, and once the pilot is reviewed HBO will determine if the new show will be picked up to series.
As for the Game of Thrones finale backlash, Bloys said that there was never any actual consideration to reshoot the final season despite almost 1.7 million people signing a Change.org petition to remake it with “competent writers.”
How Game of Thrones’ Main Characters’ Looks Have Changed Over the Seasons
“There are few downsides to having a hugely popular show but one I can think of is when you try to end it, many people have big opinions on how it should end… I think that comes with the territory. The petition shows a lot of passion and enthusiasm for the show, but it wasn’t something we seriously considered,” said Bloys.
HBO’s president of programming also revealed that the network was fairly hands-off with Benioff and Weiss in the final few seasons of Game of Thrones since the producers had hit their stride by that point. “When a show is in the sixth, seventh, eighth season of a highly successful run, there’s usually a rhythm between the network and the showrunners, so there’s minimal back and forth here and there,” he explained. “That’s not just Game of Thrones; that goes for Silicon Valley which is in its final season, they have a really good handle on what they’re doing and how they want to end it … it’s not like we’re all over them.”
As for the other Game of Thrones spinoff series that still are in development, Bloys stayed mum, saying, “The only update I have [on the GoT companion shows] is that we finished shooting the prequel in Belfast, very excited by the footage that we saw and the cast, but we’re editing that.”
Marvel’s martial artist superhero Shang-Chi is headed to the big screen in 2021. Not only will Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings star Simu Liu as the titular hero, but it’ll also finally make good a long-dangling MCU plot threat by introducing Tony Leung as the one, true Mandarin.While it might seem strange to pit Shang-Chi against a villain most commonly associated with Iron Man, this choice backs up a popular theory that the Mandarin will be depicted as Shang-Chi’s father in the MCU. Here’s why we think that theory will come to fruition in the new movie.
Marvel Comics’ Mandarin
Shang-Chi and Fu Manchu
Shang-Chi has fairly complicated origins (which we break down in greater detail in our Shang-Chi Explained feature), some of which create problems for Marvel Studios as the character makes the jump from page to screen. Originally, Shang-Chi was depicted as being the son of Dr. Fu Manchu, a villain created by pulp novelist Sax Rohmer and licensed to Marvel back in the ’70s.
The problems here are two-fold. One, Marvel no longer has the rights to the Fu Manchu character. Not only has this made reprinting the early Master of Kung Fu comics difficult, it’s prevented them from referencing Shang-Chi’s parentage in subsequent comics. Two, Fu Manchu is now widely criticized as a racist caricature and an example of the “Yellow Peril” storytelling trope. Even if Marvel could bring Fu Manchu into the MCU, it’s doubtful they’d actually want to use a villain with such a problematic history.
Marvel Phase 4 Comic Con Panel
In the comics, Marvel’s solution to the Fu Manchu problem has been to essentially replace him with a different character named Zheng Zu. A recent series called Secret Avengers revealed that Fu Manchu was one of several cover identities used by Zheng Zu over the decades. As a mystical, immortal sorcerer, Zu has no trouble impersonating others and keeping his true identity hidden from the outside world.
From Zheng Zu to Mandarin
Marvel Studios could opt to follow the example of the comics and introduce Zheng Zu in place of Fu Manchu. However, Zu isn’t a character with much name cache. He hasn’t appeared much in the comics since that initial Secret Avengers reveal. And given the relatively small mainstream exposure Shang-Chi has outside the comics, it’s in Marvel’s best interests to spruce up the character’s origin story by linking him to a more recognizable Marvel character. That’s why we think Mandarin is being re-imagined for the MCU as a replacement for Fu Manchu/Zheng Zu.
It’s a logical change given the many similarities between Zheng Zu and the Mandarin. Both are immortal men of Asian descent who wield seemingly supernatural powers. Both prefer to lurk in the shadows, manipulate others and keep their existence a secret from the outside world.
Then there’s the fact that the Mandarin is one of the greatest martial artists in the Marvel Universe. While he generally relies on his powerful rings (which grant him control over forces like fire, electricity and radiation), the Mandarin has shown himself capable of battling foes like Iron Man with nothing more than his fighting prowess. It makes sense to reveal that Shang-Chi is descended from that proud lineage. The greatest superhero martial artist in the MCU had to learn his skills from somewhere, right?
Conversely, Marvel may want to give Shang-Chi an upgrade and throw in some superhuman powers to augment his martial arts skills (similar to how Black Panther gained his new energy detonation power in the MCU). If so, it becomes much easier to explain how he acquired powers if his father is The Mandarin.
Asian Superheroes Who Need Their Own Movie or TV Show
The Mandarin Family Legacy
Both Mandarin and Shang-Chi are characters with troubled histories in Marvel’s comic. Not only is Shang-Chi the son of one of the most infamous “Yellow Peril” villains in pop culture, the Mandarin himself is another unfortunate example of that trope. Suffice it to say, those early Mandarin stories in Tales of Suspense don’t exactly stand the test of time.
Much as 2018’s Black Panther dealt with issues of race and social inequality, we’re fully expecting Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings to confront issues of representation and Asian American identity. This is Marvel’s first Asian-driven superhero movie. There’s no doubt going to be a concerted effort to acknowledge the troubled history of Shang-Chi and Mandarin and reinvent both characters in a way that makes sense for 21st century audiences. Linking the two characters as father and son is one way to find their shared humanity and ensure that the MCU doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the comics.
Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Nintendo has increased the number of levels you can share online in Super Mario Maker 2. Since the game launched last month, players have only been able to upload a maximum of 32 courses to the online Course World hub, but that limit has now been doubled, and it appears it’ll go up again with a future update.
According to an in-game notification, Nintendo plans to increase the course-upload limit one more time in the future. The company hasn’t announced when the limit will be bumped up again or what the new limit will be, but in the meantime, players can now upload a maximum of 64 courses. As before, however, you’ll need to have a Nintendo Switch Online subscription in order to upload your levels and play those created by other players.
In addition to the course-limit increase, Nintendo has shared the Course ID for a new level created by the Mario Maker 2 development team. This course revolves around the Superball Flower, an obscure power-up from Super Mario Land that can be unlocked as a course part in Mario Maker 2 when you clear the game’s Story mode. You can see the Course ID as well as a clip of the level in the tweet below.
The maximum number of courses that you can upload in #SuperMarioMaker2 has been increased from 32 to 64 courses! We plan to raise this limit again in the future, so stay tuned. The development team has also created a special course, featuring Super Ball Mario! 24Y-BMK-5JG pic.twitter.com/bJ8pl5qbDq
— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 24, 2019
Super Mario Maker 2 is available exclusively for Nintendo Switch. The game received a lot of praise from critics, including GameSpot. In our Super Mario Maker 2 review, GameSpot’s Peter Brown wrote, “Whether exploring the full potential of a single element or throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, I’ve got the itch to join the creator’s club. Mario Maker 2 makes the learning process intuitive and enjoyable. Most importantly, it’s enabled designers amateur and professional alike to share their creativity with the world.”
The Xbox One’s Home will get a new look for those enrolled in Microsoft’s Xbox Insiders program. A new console update, available today for those Alpha Skip Ahead Xbox Insiders, will introduce “a streamlined user interface” as well as “further [evolutions]” to voice commands.
An Xbox Wire post reports that the new update will “[deliver] a faster Home experience” and “[evolves] Xbox voice commands to improve the voice experience.” Both features aren’t available to all Xbox Insiders, with the new Home rolling out to the Alpha and Alpha Skip Ahead ring and the voice commands heading to the Alpha Skip Ahead ring. Those not enrolled in Xbox Insiders will have to wait, as there’s no confirmation on when the changes will be made public for everyone.
A Streamlined Home
The new Home will “deliver an easy and seamless experience for you to navigate your console,” Xbox Wire writes. The goal here is to get you into your video games faster and keep your content at the front of the Home experience. The new experimental Home design, below, removes the scrolling options from the top for things like Community, Mixer, and Store for dedicated buttons underneath the selected piece of content on the left side of the screen. Things have also been shifted around a little and the tilesets look a little larger than the system’s current Home design.
The experimental Home design will be available this week to Xbox Insiders part of the Alpha and Alpha Skip Ahead rings.
Evolving Voice Commands
Voice commands are also changing, with the objective being to “further [evolve] commands on Xbox and [move] away from on-console experiences to cloud-based assistant experiences,” according to Xbox Wire. This means Cortana will be inaccessible via headset, instead shifting to “the Xbox Skill for Cortana via the Cortana app on iOS, Android, and Windows or Harmon Kardon Invoke speaker.” However, Cortana is still reachable via Alexa-enabled devices. Due to the changes in voice commands, this console update will disable the virtual keyboard’s dictation on the system, but Microsoft will share what alternative solutions are in development in the near future.
Similar to the experimental Home design, these new voice command changes will arrive this week and are available to the Alpha Skip Ahead ring. Xbox Wire notes that the new voice commands will “fully rollout to all users this fall,” but it’s unclear if that means the Alpha ring or all of the Xbox Insiders.
The classic novel series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is reportedly being adapted into a series for Hulu. THR reports that the series will be headed up by Carlton Cuse (Lost, Jack Ryan) and Jason Fuchs (Wonder Woman). The two will write and executive produce the project.
The show is said to be under the umbrella of ABC Signature, the ABC division that focuses on streaming shows. Disney is also the majority owner of Hulu, and owns the rights to Hitchhiker’s Guide. Cuse has an overall deal with ABC as well.
The HGTTG series of novels from Douglas Adams follows Arthur Dent, a down-on-his-luck British man who goes on a space-hopping adventure after Earth is destroyed to make space for an intergalactic highway. The series is known for its dry wit, with equal parts satirical and absurdist humor. It was previously adapted into a movie in 2005 starring Martin Freeman, Mos Def, and Zooey Deschanel.
Hulu has gained critical attention in recent years for The Handmaid’s Tale. While Disney is the majority owner, it offers a mix of original programming and selections from network and cable TV. Disney’s own streaming service, Disney+, is scheduled to launch this fall for $7 per month.
The MCU likes to play fast and loose with its villains. From total reinventions to visual overhauls, the last ten years have been a testing ground for Marvel Studios to really push their source material to its absolute limits–and sometimes far beyond–in service of making a compelling film that stands alone for fans who haven’t buried themselves in the last six decades of published comics history. Most of the time, that works perfectly fine–Marvels’ reinventions have given us some truly fascinating bad guy takes, from Hela, recreated to be Thor’s long lost sister, to Vulture, pivoted from hand-wringing evildoer to complicated, down on his luck father.
Other times, the major changes can leave something to be desired. This was, unfortunately, the case with Captain America: Civil War’s Helmut Zemo–expertly played by Daniel Brühl, but almost entirely unrecognizable when stood next to his comic book counterpart. Live-action Zemo was a vengeful Sokovian soldier whose vendetta was less specific to any one Avenger personally, and more just a scattershot across the entire superhero community. He worked in the story, sure, but in terms of memorable onscreen villains, he didn’t really register, especially not in the shadow of the movie’s real conflict, the knock-down-drag-out brawl between Captain America and Iron Man.
But luckily, as we learned through the news out of San Diego Comic-Con and the new Disney+ streaming service are giving us a second pass at Zemo complete with a new look, care of the Falcon & The Winter Soldier miniseries, which means we might actually get to see a live-action translation of one of the greatest hero-villain rivalries in comics history.
The Real Zemo Story
Like oh so many parts of the Captain America pantheon, Zemo’s story actually begins back in World War II–sort of, at least. The Zemo family was an invention of the 1960s, swooping into the mix after Steve Rogers had been revived for the modern Marvel era, but the introduction included a little fancy footwork to retroactively place them throughout history. Heinrich Zemo, Helmut’s father, was eventually revealed to be one of Cap’s greatest foes throughout the war, and the villain responsible for the exploding plane trap that killed Bucky Barnes and sent Steve Rogers into the Atlantic ocean where he was frozen for years.
Once he was revived, Steve didn’t take too kindly to the fact that Heinrich had killed his sidekick, and he set out for revenge. During a confrontation, Heinrich fired a laser gun which Steve deflected with his shield, hitting the terrain behind Heinrich and triggering an avalanche which killed him. This was the late ’60s and the whole “no killing” rule for superheroes hadn’t really set in yet, so Steve was mostly just excited about this development, believing justice to have finally been served.
Fast forward several years for the surprise reveal that Heinrich had a son, Helmut, who popped up to blame Captain America for the death of his father, and you’ve got a recipe for a serious grudge match.
For years, that was essentially the most important thing to know about Helmut. He blamed Captain America for his father’s death and he’d do basically anything to try and get his revenge–even if it ultimately meant driving himself more and more insane. Through the years, Zemo ping-ponged around from raving lunatic to begrudging anti-hero and leader of “reformed” villain teams like the Thunderbolts–but, regardless of where he fell on the morality spectrum, he never really rose past b- or c-list side character.
At least, until Bucky Barnes came back.
The rivalry to end all rivalries
Bucky Barnes’ surprise resurrection as The Winter Soldier was not something fans saw coming. In fact, there used to be a cliche shared among readers that the only permanent superhero deaths were Jason Todd, Bucky Barnes, and Uncle Ben.
Obviously, only one of those things is still true today–but the sentiment was very much still alive when Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting launched into their early 2000s story arc revolving around the surprise reveal that not only had Bucky Barnes survived the plane explosion trap set by Heinrich Zemo back in the ’40s, he’d been brainwashed and used by the Soviet spy cell known as The Red Room for the past six-odd decades as an assassin.
Naturally, this revelation had a pretty major effect on Steve, but it also wound up getting back to poor Helmut, who, as a traditionally less-than-stable chaotic element in the Marvel Universe, did not handle the news very well. Unlike the MCU’s version of events, Steve was killed shortly after the Winter Soldier revelation, leaving a magically recovered Bucky (all his memories were returned thanks to Steve wishing on the Tesseract–don’t worry too much about it) to take over as Captain America in the meantime.
At first, this was a relatively secret development–no one really know Bucky Barnes had come back from the dead, and even fewer knew that he had picked up the shield–but the villains were the first to key into the fact that something was definitely strange. You know, like when they suddenly found themselves fighting a Captain America who had no qualms about stabbing them with trench knives.
When word got to Zemo, things took a sharp turn for his mental state. All those feelings about his father’s legacy and death at the hands of Steve Rogers all those years ago came roaring back with newly honed focus. Bucky Barnes was alive. Heinrich’s death trap had been a failure. The Zemo legacy had been tarnished. But what’s more, there was the fact that Bucky Barnes had been forgiven by his teammates and friends, despite his actions as the brainwashed Winter Soldier. He was embraced by the superhero community and the public, something that Helmut himself had never accomplished despite his years of on-again-off-again anti-heroism and team leadership.
This combination of major revelations was enough to drive Zemo right off the edge with his crosshairs firmly trained on Bucky; the spark in the powder keg of one of Marvel’s greatest and most under-appreciated grudge matches.
Blood feuds
Zemo took a new approach when he set out to ruin Bucky Barnes. There were no big villain monologues or threats of world destruction. Instead, he opted for the personal route–he didn’t need Bucky dead, at least not yet; he needed him thoroughly destroyed in every way that could matter. This process involved a months-long conspiracy where Zemo strategically gaslit, mind-controlled, or otherwise manipulated Bucky into dangerous public situations while strategically leaking sealed documents that linked Bucky back to the Winter Soldier’s crimes.
Public opinion of the new Captain America took an almost immediate turn for the worst. While Zemo himself continued to physically and mentally torture Bucky–even forcing him to re-live his own death in real-time–the US government began moving to try the Winter Soldier for war crimes and treason, of which he was found guilty and sent to Russia to be imprisoned in a gulag–at least, for a little while. There was a whole Fight Club situation involving genetically modified bears and a murderer’s row of vintage villains. It was awesome. But naturally, it was also temporary.
Zemo and Bucky’s burning resentment, however, was anything but.
In recent years, their hatred for one another has manifested in a few unusual ways. For a time, Bucky took over as leader of the Thunderbolts, a team that Zemo himself used to command (unsurprisingly, Zemo wasn’t too enthusiastic about this sudden change in management). Around the same time, Steve Rogers’ history was cosmically re-written (after he was resurrected, of course) to the point where he believed that he and Helmut, rather than he and Bucky, had been friends and partners through the 1940s. This gave Helmut yet another opportunity to really stick it to Bucky and force him to go through the whole plane-death-trap scenario yet again–you know, just for good measure. The whole plan really revolved around hitting Bucky as close to home as possible, because world domination and evil plans are completely secondary to Zemo’s burning need to just completely screw this guy over as hard as possible.
That’s really biggest and most important takeaway from Bucky and Helmut’s constant conflicts: They’re always deeply, deeply personal. These are two characters who hate each other not because of their ideals or their respective moral codes–there’s no real “I’m right and you’re wrong” hero/villain back-and-forth, and they don’t have a Batman-and-the-Joker “we’re two sides of the same coin” thing going on. They just hate each other.
And with any luck, we’ll finally start to see that hatred start to come to the surface in the Disney+ TV show. After all, not only is Zemo getting a more comics-inspired look, he has plenty of reason following Civil War to resent everything Bucky stands for. After all, Zemo’s grand plan to dismantle the Avengers not only failed, it brought his ace-in-the-hole, the brainwashed assassin, even further into the fold.
