TV, Movies & Home Theatre

The upcoming Lord of the Rings animated prequel movie is scheduled to release in December, and ahead of the release, Phillipia Boyens, one of the movie's writers, has given some behind-the-scenes details on one of the characters, Saruman the White.

Boyens also co-wrote Peter Jackson's trilogy of Lord of the Rings films and is now, along with Peter Jackson, producing the War of Rohirrim. This animated prequel will take viewers back 183 years before the events of Jackson's trilogy, and will tell the story of Helm Hammerhand, a legendary kind of Rohan that is required to defend his people and family from the Dunlendings, a group of wild mountain people that are bitter foes to Rohan.

This story includes Saruman the White, and according to Boyen's Christopher Lee, he will post-humorously reprise his role as the character in the new animated movie. According to the writer, the team behind the project gained access to Lee's archive and was able to sample enough authentic voice recordings that it was possible for Lee to voice the character once again.

Videogame TV adaptations have come a long way, partly thanks to the critical and commercial success of both The Last of Us on HBO and Fallout on Prime Video. Award-winning drama, engaging action, and faithfully staying true to the spirit and tone of iconic interactive experiences are now the expectation or new bar for a new high-profile videogame to TV adaptations.

Announced in 2022, a live-action God of War series from Sony Pictures TV and Amazon MGM Studios entered production - with the series set to follow in the footsteps of the most recent games. The story follows Kratos, now in the Norse realm of Midgard, looking after his son Atreus as they embark on a mission to spread his recently departed wife's ashes from the highest peak.

Those who have played God of War and the sequel, God of War Ragnarok, on PC or PlayStation 5 will undoubtedly be excited about the possibility of a new TV series - especially when the games are incredibly cinematic. It might be time to temper those expectations, as the TV adaptation is in trouble.

Can you believe Interstellar was released into theaters 10 years ago? Paramount Pictures is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Christopher Nolan's epic space movie being re-released into theaters, into IMAX, and a new 10th Anniversary Collector's Edition 4K Blu-ray box set.

The new 10th Anniversary Collector's Edition was created with Christopher Nolan's participation and approval, which includes Interstellar in both 4K Ultra HD and Blu-ray disc, as well as a third Blu-ray. There's also a digital copy of Interstellar, reproductions of the 5 costume patches, 5 theatrical poster reproductions, and a never-before-seen storyboard sequence from Nolan's archives.

Interstellar's new 10th Anniversary set also includes over 2 hours of new and legacy bonus content that drives deeper into the science of the film, its groundbreaking production, and a brand-new discussion on the impacts Interstellar has had in the last 10 years.

Amazon is planning on increasing the amount of money it makes on its Prime Video streaming service by increasing the number of available advertisement slots, meaning users will be blessed with even more ads than they are already consuming.

Notably, current Prime Video users consume between 2 and 3.5 minutes of advertisements every hour. According to a recent Financial Times interview with Kelly Day, Amazon's Vice President of Prime Video International, currently, standard-tier Prime Video users don't receive ads in the middle of content, but that could change in 2025 with Amazon's plan to revise its advertising structure across its platform.

The FT article also revealed Amazon's plan to roll out different forms of ads on Prime Video, such as shoppable ads, carousel ads, intermissions ads, and brand quiz ads. Currently, advertisements on Prime come in two forms; a trailer for Amazon's next upcoming big piece of content (movie/TV show), and then additional slotted ads from brands that have purchased these slots.

The season two finale of Amazon's The Rings of Power has just wrapped up, and now we are beginning to hear the rumblings of the third season being greenlit.

The first season of The Rings of Power wasn't particularly well received by Middle-Earth fans, who cited many problems with the story, particularly the differences between the adaptation and the book lore. Despite the criticisms, the first season generated more than 150 million viewers, and according to studio head Jennifer Salke, season two has generated 55 million and is expected to catch up to season one's numbers. Amazon declined to comment on what constitutes a "view" but did say that The Rings of Power is still within its streaming platforms' top five shows.

Will season three get greenlit? The Hollywood Reporter states Amazon is on the verge of officially approving the third season for the show, with the studio expected to make a decision and an announcement by the end of the month. An indicator that a third season is on the way is that Amazon MGM Studios touted The Rings of Power content to advertisers at the Prime Video UK Upfront presentation in London, which typically only happens when a studio is confident in continuing development on that project.

BIOSTAR has just launched its new flagship X870E VALKYRIE motherboard, ready to run AMD's new Zen 5-based Ryzen 9000 series CPUs.

The new BIOSTAR X870E VALKYRIE motherboard is ready for AMD's new Ryzen 9000 series CPUs, with the X870E VALKYRIE motherboard supporting up to 192GB of DDR5 memory, enough to handle a few Chrome tabs, that's for sure.

Get ready to crank up your gaming rig with the X870E VALKYRIE, because this beast of a motherboard doesn't mess around. It's packing dual PCIe 5.0 x16 slots alongside a PCIe 4.0 x16, so you can slap in those top-tier GPUs without breaking a sweat, ensuring your system is future-proofed for whatever comes next in gaming or pro-level rendering.

James Cameron has been working with and in the water for decades now, starting with Titanic in the mid 90s through to Avatar... but now the Terminator director's next movie is Hiroshima: a real-life story of a man who survived both nuclear blasts in Japan.

Deadline reports that the Aliens and Terminator director has secured the rights to Charles Pellegrino's upcoming historical book Ghosts of Hiroshima, and will use that as well as Pellegrino's previous non-fiction book The Last Train From Hiroshima, as the basis for a single movie about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Cameron describes The Last Train From Hiroshima as an "uncompromising theatrical film" which will reportedly shoot as soon as he's unlocked from finishing Avatar. Hiroshima will be a movie about a Japanese man that survived the first nuclear bomb dropped in Hiroshima, to catch a ride to Nagasaki, and then survived the second nuclear explosion.

FromSoftware games have become extremely popular with a large portion of the gaming industry really respecting the difficulty and time that goes into completing each of the studio's titles.

The explosion in popularity of FromSoftware games peaked with the release of Elden Ring, which went on to sell 25 million units by June 2024, being awarded Game of the Year, and becoming one of the best-selling video games of all time. The success of Elden Ring brought an influx of new fans of FromSoftware games, and probably one that falls to the wayside in discussions about FromSoftware's Dark Souls and Elden Ring games is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

However, rumors previously suggested Shadows Die Twice was pegged to receive its own anime based on the video game, and now according to Ecuf, who writes it can exclusively announce the production of Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice will be handled by Qzilla. Additionally, the anime will have a "low episode count" and be based on the events occurring in the FromSoftware title. For those anime fans out there, Qzilla recently produced the opening for Jigokuraku / Hell's Paradise Season 1.

One of the most beloved performances to ever grace the big screen screen was Ian McKellen's role as Gandalf the Grey/White in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies, and with new Middle-Earth movies on the way it begs the question - Will Ian McKellen be returning to the iconic role of Gandalf?

McKellen has previously expressed extreme enthusiasm at the idea of returning to the role of Gandalf, even going as to publicly say he wants to pick up the staff before he finally retires, which currently doesn't have an end in sight. McKellen told The Big Issue that his passion for The Lord of the Rings hasn't subsided and that he will keep on acting as long as his body has the strength to enable to him to do so. "I shall just keep at it as long as the legs and the lungs and the mind keep working," said McKellen.

The 85-year-old said to the publication that he was informed there are new Middle-Earth movies in the works and he has been approached to reprise his role as Gandalf. McKellen didn't confirm that he was returning to the role but said, "Gandalf will be involved, and they hope that I'll be playing him." Speaking to BBC Breakfast McKellen said, "I'm not letting anyone else put on the pointy hat and beard if I can help it."

The official trailer for The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim has been released on the Warner Bros YouTube channel, giving us our first look at Peter Jackson's ground-breaking return to J.R.R Tolkien's Middle-Earth.

The War of the Rohirrim will focus on the story of Helm Hammerhand, a king of Rohan, and the character that Helm's Deep was named after. For those who don't remember, Helm's Deep is where Theodon, the King of Rohan in Jackson's films, and his people retreat to in The Two Towers, which is then eventually attacked by Saruman's forces.

The trailer starts off with showing footage from Peter Jackson's Two Towers, such as shots of Edoras, Gandalf, the iconic Middle-Earth map, and Helm's Deep, which is where the trailer cuts from live-action into anime. The events of The War of the Rohirrim occur 183 years before the events of the original trilogy of movies. Fans should expect a pretty self-contained story that only sparingly references characters from the original trilogy of movies or even the Hobbit movies.