TV, Movies & Home Theatre - Page 9

Jack Black has spoken to Variety and said that he's patiently waiting for some news about a sequel to the intensely popular Super Mario Bros. Movie.

The voice actor for the infamous Bowser sat down for an interview with Variety and revealed that the only communication about a potential sequel has been coming from him, other than that it has been "radio silence" between him, Nintendo, and the animation studio behind the original project, Illumination. Black told the publication that, "The only chatter has been coming from me, and I don't even know if I'm allowed to chatter."

Black said that he's been "chomping at the bit to get back to business," indicating that he's completely on board for a new Super Mario Bros. movie. Black appeared on an episode of the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, where he revealed the iconic track "Peaches" was only created halfway through the production of the movie.

Marvel Studios has lost Kang the Conqueror as the studio fires Emmy-nominated actor Jonathan Majors in the wake of a guilty verdict.

Jonathan Majors is out as Kang, with Marvel Studios choosing to let the actor go after his guilty verdict in court earlier today. The actor was found guilty of reckless assault and harassment by a six-person NYC jury in his domestic violence trial. A rep from Marvel has confirmed the news and their decision to part ways with the actor moving forward.

Majors had played his character "Kang" within the MCU over multiple projects and was slated to be a big villain in Phases 4 and 5. His character debuted in season one of the popular series "Loki" and appeared in the series' second season earlier this year. The actor also starred alongside Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly in Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania, which made more than 476M worldwide. Major's character was set to be the MCU's new big bad, with his journey coming to a head in the previously titled Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, now titled Avengers 5, until a new title is given to the sequel.

"The Monsterverse continues." Warner Bros and Legendary Entertainment have revealed the first official trailer for their upcoming film Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire on December 4, with returning director Adam Wingard at the helm.

The sequel to 2021's Godzilla vs Kong premiered during the pandemic and was one of Warner Bros's biggest hits of the year. Set to hit the big screen everywhere in April of 2024, this next chapter in the cinematic Monsterverse promises to team up everyone's favorite titans against a common enemy in the form of a "colossal undiscovered threat" with the tagline "Rise together or fall alone."

Godzilla x Kong will also probe deeper into the origins of our large friends and the mysteries surrounding Skull Island, while also spending more time exploring the Hollow Earth Realm.

Universal has announced the next sequel of one of Dreamwork's most beloved franchises with the release of its first official trailer, "Kung Fu Panda 4." Jack Black is returning to the role.

Nearly ten years since the last film, comedy icon Jack black is set to return to his iconic character Po in a brand new chapter of Kung Fu and adventure. The world's most unlikely kung fu master, Po the Panda, must prepare to take on his new role of spiritual leader and find someone else to take on his role as the new Dragon warrior.

He will have to train a new kung fu expert for the spot while fighting off villains new and old, courtesy of this film's big bad, the Chameleon. Among the characters returning are Li, Po's birth father, voiced by Bryan Cranston, Kung Fu master Shifu, voiced by Dustin Hoffman; and Tai Lung, Shifu's former student and present arch nemesis, voiced by Emmy Award nominee Ian McShane. Hot in the industry right now, Oscar-winning actor Ke Huy Quan also joins the cast as a new character for the movie Han, the leader of the Den of Thieves.

Netflix has taken to its YouTube channel to share the first official teaser trailer for Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F, the return of Eddie Murphy to his iconic character, Axel Foley.

The new movie is expected to hit Netflix's streaming services in the summer of next year, and will feature quite a few big-name actors, such as Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who will team up with Murphy's character as his new partner, along with Billy Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and John Taggart (John Ashton) reprising their characters from the franchise. According to reports from Deadline, Will Beall has penned the script for the movie and Mark Molloy has directed it.

Murphy is also producing the movie along with Jerry Bruckheimer and Chad Oman of Jerry Bruckheimer Films, who said that Murphy "can do anything," referring to his ability to fall back into Axel Foley's character with ease. The story of the flick Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F involves Foley's daughter getting her life threatened, which turns into Foley and his new partner uncovering a conspiracy.

Google has released its annual Year in Search 2023 list, and even though there are still a few weeks left before we call it quits on 2023, we've now got a bunch of Top 10 lists covering the most searched movies, games, TV shows, and more. And with that, it's easy to conclude that the most popular searches are stand-ins for the most popular 'x' things for 2023.

Taking a look at games, Hogwarts Legacy takes the crown, beating Sony's The Last of Us franchise, Bethesda's Starfield, Baldur's Gate 3, and Diablo IV. The list of games isn't all heavy-hitter blockbusters, as some of the popular games for 2023 include Battlegrounds Mobile, the Wordle-style Connections from The New York Times, and a Japanese puzzle game that loosely translates to 'Watermelon Game.'

Interestingly, although Baldur's Gate 3 swept The Game Awards and is widely viewed as the best RPG released this year, it sits behind Bethesda's Starfield. Another interesting takeaway is that Grand Theft Auto 6 is nowhere to be found.

Apple has been working on a slew of software updates for release before the end of the year, and while all of the attention might be on the upcoming iOS 17.2 update, the tvOS 17.2 update might actually be one of the biggest changes of all. The software will be released on the Apple TV before Christmas, we expect, and it will remove some of the most familiar apps when it arrives.

That's as confirmed by Apple TV expert Sigmund Judge in a post on X, the social network previously known as Twitter. Judge shared details of what we can expect to see when the tvOS 17.2 update drops and it seems that beyond a newly redesigned interface, there will be plenty going away.

Judge notes that not only will Apple remove the iTunes Movies and iTunes TV Shows apps, but also a number of features including theatrical poster art, library number counts, and user and Rotten Tomatoes reviews. Apple TV owners can also expect to lose the correct display of TV show season, and the display of owned title resolution, too.

HBO's House of the Dragon season 2 will be released in the Summer of 2024, and ahead of the new season, the creator of the books, George R. R. Martin, has warned the new season may make you cry.

The writer of the famed series Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, took to his blog called "Not a Blog" and revealed he has seen the first two episodes of the new House of the Dragon season, expected to be released sometime in the summer of 2024. According to Martin, the first two episodes he saw were only "rough cuts," but from what he saw, he can distill that they are "dark, mind you. Very dark." Additionally, Martin warned, "They may make you cry. (I did not cry myself, but one of my friends did)."

Furthermore, Martin described both of the episodes as emotional, gut-wrenching, and heart-rendering, which he says is "just the sort of thing I like". For those that aren't familiar with House of the Dragon and have only seen Game of Thrones - House of the Dragon is set 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones and is based on Martin's book Fire & Blood, which tells the story of House Targaryen.

Will Smith will be returning to the role of Robert Neville for the upcoming sequel of I Am Legend released in 2007. The sequel will be using the mythology of the DVD release where Smith's character survived and not the cinema release where he died.

Smith revealed he is returning to the role at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia, where he teased that he was scheduled to be on a call the following day with Michael B. Jordan, who he later confirmed was in the film. Smith didn't reveal any details about the movie but explained that the sequel will be continuing on from the DVD version of the film, which featured an alternative ending where Robert Neville wasn't killed.

"But for the DVD, there was an alternate version of the ending of the movie where my character lived," he said. "We are going with the mythology of the DVD version." Adding, "I can't tell you anything more, but Michael B. Jordan is in and we're doing it". Notably, Smith previously hadn't expressed interest in a sequel to I Am Legend, but with input from Michael B. Jordan, a new idea was proposed that piqued his interest.

Following strong controversy over season 1, Paramount could redeem its Halo TV series with its upcoming second season.

Halo is returning to Paramount with a second season that debuts on February 8, 2024, the streamer has announced. The first two episodes of Halo S2 will be available on that date, with new episodes releasing every week after the premiere. Paramount has dropped a new 90 second trailer for Halo season 2 that appears to tap into the core themes of the franchise, capturing some impressive shots along the way.

The trailer really underscores the desperation and dimming hope that the human race had to face in Halo's sci-fi universe. The galaxy is on fire, ignited by a bloodthirsty alien zealots who seek to burn whole worlds in a misguided religious crusade. The footage shows planets being glassed by Covenant supercruisers, marines being brutally slashed in the shadows by a lethal elite assassin, and Master Chief going toe-to-toe with a sword-bearing elite in a sequence that can only be described as epic.

Amazon has released the first teaser trailer for the Fallout TV show, revealing a strong attention to detail and authentic representation of the post-apocalyptic franchise.

Following the bad reception to Netflix's Resident Evil and Paramount's Halo TV series, fans are optimistic about Prime Video's new Fallout adaptation. The streamer just released an entertaining 2-minute teaser for the Fallout show that touches upon the gritty humor-meets-horror style and themes that the game IP is known for.

The trailer has some welcome surprises, including a look at the Brotherhood of Steel in action, faithful companion Dogmeat alongside a positively ghoulish Walter Goggins, a hilarious cyclops overseer mutant sequence, and a highlight of some of the fiendishly brutal monstrosities that roam irradiated Los Angeles like the fearsome yao guai and what appears to be a horribly mutated axolotl that has fingers inside of its hideous mouth.

The iconic videogame franchise Fallout is getting the prestige TV treatment, with the first season set to debut on Amazon's Prime Video streaming service on April 12, 2024. Until now, full details on the adaptation have been kept under wraps, and outside of a few leaked set photos, we haven't had much to go on.

Thanks to an in-depth reveal at Vanity Fair, we now have a lot of Fallout TV series info to chew on. The story is a brand-new one and not based on any of the games - and it's canon, according to Bethesda's Todd Howard, who serves as an executive producer on the show. With Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy at the helm, the duo behind HBO's Westworld, the good news is that the dark humor of the Fallout games will be a big part of the post-apocalyptic story being told.

On that front, the main character will be Lucy, plates by Ella Purnell, "an optimistic Vault Dweller with an all-American can-do spirit" who will venture outside the Los Angeles-based Vault 33 for the first time in her life after "her peaceful and idealistic nature is tested when people harm her loved ones."

In a world where there is are seemingly exponential options when it comes to convenient streaming services, physical media sales are down with less and less people going out and buying Blu-rays of their favorite movies and instead just catching them on Netflix.

Famed directors such as Guillermo Del Toro, and Christopher Nolan have expressed concern regarding the dwindling physical media sales of movies, and the power streaming services such as Netflix have over film history. The directors point out that if Netflix remove a movie from its directory because the views its getting are no longer proportional, or profitable, compared to what it costs to have it on Netflix's servers, the movie is gone forever and can never been seen again.

Nolan recently touched on this, saying, "There is a danger, these days, that if things only exist in the streaming version they do get taken down, they come and go." This statement from the Oppenheimer director was backed up by Guillermo Del Toro, who wrote, "Physical media is almost a Fahrenheit 451 (where people memorized entire books and thus became the book they loved) level of responsibility. If you own a great 4K HD, Blu-ray, DVD etc etc of a film or films you love... you are the custodian of those films for generations to come."

Apple is reportedly getting ready to make a change to the way people buy and rent movies, with the familiar iTunes Movie Store set to be killed off. Instead, it's claimed that Apple will move the same functionality into the Apple TV app, somewhere where it arguably makes more sense.

The news comes after 9to5Mac spotted code in the second beta releases of iOS 17,2 and tvOS 17,2 that show Apple will merge the iTunes Movie Store into the Apple TV app. Notably. users can already buy movies and TV shows in the TV app but those using Apple devices like the iPhone and iPad still have a dedicated iTunes Movie Store available as well. That, it seems, is about to change.

The strings seen by 9to5Mac mention text that suggests a new message will be displayed to say that the iTunes Movie Store has moved to the Apple TV app. However, it isn't yet clear whether the change will be implemented when iS 17.2 and tvOS 17.2 are rolled out to the public. That being said, the 9to5Mac report does say that comments left over from Apple engineers suggest that the tweak will be rolled out remotely. That means that it might not be strictly tied to the release of these new software updates after all.

Take-Two Interactive CEO confirms the company is currently "in discussions" to adapt more of its video game IPs into films.

The success of the Super Mario Bros. movie has catalyzed more film adaptations of big games, and Nintendo recently announced that a new Zelda movie is in the works (with Sony Pictures, no less). Take-Two already has two films in the works--a Borderlands movie with an all-star cast from Lionsgate, and a new BioShock film--but company CEO Strauss Zelnick says that more IPs could be licensed out for future movies.

In TTWO's recent Q2'24 earnings call, Zelnick gave a thorough answer that underlines the high risks of film and TV, saying that if any more movies are made (like, say, a Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption feature length film) that the company would be extremely careful and very selective. At no point does Take-Two plan to self-finance a film, instead opting for licensing. One wrong move could essentially dilute or damage the IP which is something that Take-Two absolutely does not want to do.

The reports were correct: Nintendo has officially announced that it is developing a live action film based on The Legend of Zelda franchise.

Shortly after releasing strong Q2 earnings results, Nintendo today formally announced that is working on a new live action Zelda movie. The film will be produced by Shigeru Miyamoto and Avi Arad, former CEO of Marvel Studios and current chairman of Arad Productions, a studio that's had a hand in multiple live action Marvel adaptations including Uncharted, Spider-Man Homecoming, Ghost in the Shell, and many more.

Sony Pictures Entertainment will be co-financing the film, with Nintendo paying for the majority of production costs. Wes Ball, the director of the Maze Runner films and the upcoming Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, will direct the Zelda film.

Here's some more bad news in the world of streaming services, as Apple is hiking the price of Apple TV+ - and sadly, it's a big old increase, plus it's not the only subscription charge to increase among Apple's offerings.

As TechSpot noticed (and Mark Gurman raised on X), Apple TV+ is going to increase from a $6.99 monthly fee to $9.99, which is a 43% hike - ouch indeed. The yearly price will go up from $69 to $99, we're told.

It's particularly painful as with the pricing on other streaming services like Netflix on the way up, and Amazon planning to show ads with Prime Video (and charge to remove them) early next year, Apple has remained a wallet-friendly alternative.

Today has special significance in the world of Fallout, with October 23 being the day that the bombs fell and thermonuclear war broke out between the world's superpowers. When you look at it that way, it might not sound like a cause for celebration, but Bethesda has taken the opportunity to offer a Fallout Day Sale across storefronts like Steam and GOG.

With up to 80% discounts on games like Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, with the sales extending to the many bits of DLC that dropped post-launch - if you haven't played Fallout 4's Far Harbor or Nuka World expansions, now's the time - it's the perfect time to catch up on or jump into any of the many Fallout gaming experiences out there, which includes older titles like Fallout 2 and the iconic Fallout: New Vegas.

The biggest Fallout-related news of the day is definitely the word coming from Amazon, with confirmation that the highly-anticipated Fallout TV series will begin streaming on April 12, 2024.

The ad-free plan for Discovery Plus is going up in price in the US, and it's a fairly hefty jump.

Currently the subscription runs to $6.99 per month, but that is being hiked to $8.99 (and then applicable taxes on top).

The change will kick in with the next billing cycle for subscribers after (or on) November 2, so as you might expect, nothing is happening this month.

Apple has become the go-to destination for those looking to enjoy Major League Soccer thanks to its MLS Season Pass while Major League Baseball is also covered off via the Apple TV app. What's next? A new report suggests that we might see Apple turn its attention to motorsport.

That new report comes via the Business F1 magazine and was picked up by 9to5Mac. If a deal is done, it's thought that it could cost Apple around $2 billion per year to become the exclusive rights holder for streaming Formula 1 sport around the world.

However, the move would take time to come to fruition. It's noted that there are already F1 deals in place that would need to expire before Apple would be able to swoop in, including an ESPN deal that runs until 2025. The report claims that Apple would look to sign a seven-year deal, with the global rights becoming available around five years into that timeframe.