Month: January 2019

Disney had a monster year in 2018 at the box office. Its movies collectively made $3.092 billion in the United States and $7.325 billion globally, according to a box office roundup by Entertainment Weekly. The domestic box office performance is a new all-time record, while the global result is the second-highest ever, only behind the $7.605 billion that Disney movies collectively made in 2016.

Marvel movies helped Disney’s performance substantially in 2018. Avengers: Infinity War raked in $2.049 billion globally, while Black Panther made $1.347 billion worldwide. The Disney Pixar movie Incredibles 2 pulled in $1.24 billion globally, while Ant-Man and the Wasp took in a mighty $623.1 million. New releases Ralph Breaks the Internet and Mary Poppins Returns are also expected to be big-time money-makers.

Disney movies were not guaranteed box office smashes in 2018, however, as Solo: A Star Wars Story took in $393.6 million worldwide–the worst result in the history of the Star Wars series. The Oprah-starring A Wrinkle in Time, meanwhile, only made $132.9 million worldwide.

Disney is expected to have another massive year in 2019 thanks to major new releases like Captain Marvel and Avengers: Endgame from Marvel, along with new live-action versions of Aladdin, Dumbo, and The Lion King. Disney also has Toy Story 4 coming up this year from Pixar, while the long-awaited Frozen 2 hits theatres just before Thanksgiving, and it’s expected to be a huge success. On top of those, the final entry in the new Star Wars trilogy, Episode IX, comes to theaters in December 2019.

What’s more, Disney is buying many of competitor Fox’s assets, including Deadpool and X-Men, so even bigger box office returns in the future are expected.

If the established rotation for which developer is responsible for each Call of Duty game continues into 2019, then it’s Infinity Ward’s turn next. And a recent tweet of a skull by the company’s senior communication manager Ashton Williams may confirm that it is Infinity Ward that’s at the helm and also hint at what the next Call of Duty title might be. Although there was no accompanying text, the skull itself could imply that Infinity Ward is working on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4.

Since Infinity Ward is the developer behind Call of Duty: Ghosts, many first suspected the tweet was teasing Ghosts 2. However, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier has since claimed in a forum post that isn’t the case. Prior to Ghosts and Infinite Warfare, Infinity Ward was responsible for the widely popular Modern Warfare series. Fans may recall that one of the major characters from Modern Warfare 2, Lieutenant Simon “Ghost” Riley, wore a skull-patterned balaclava. Williams’ tweet may be in reference to that, which could mean there’s a Modern Warfare sequel starring the character scheduled for 2019.

However, considering the popularity of Modern Warfare Remastered, Williams tweet could instead just as easily be a hint that a remaster for Modern Warfare 2 is in the works as well. Infinity Ward released Modern Warfare Remastered alongside Infinite Warfare, so the developer could be planning to do something similar with whatever new game is planned. This is all conjecture though, and the tweet could just as easily be a tease for a brand-new Call of Duty series that has nothing to do with Modern Warfare.

Treyarch’s 2018 Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 was the first game in the franchise to not feature a traditional single-player campaign. Instead, Black Ops 4 included the franchise’s first battle royale mode, titled Blackout. There hasn’t been an announcement of whether 2019’s Call of Duty will implement either of these changes.

Pokemon Go‘s first in-game event of the new year is now underway. Developer Niantic has kicked off the Adventure Sync Hatchathon, which is scheduled to run until January 15 and will reward players with extra Candy and Stardust for hatching Eggs.

During the event, you’ll be able to earn twice the normal amount of Stardust and Candy for each Pokemon Egg you hatch. On top of that, Niantic says you will have a higher likelihood of receiving 5 and 10 km Eggs–which can hatch into Pokemon like Elekid, Magby, and Chansey–by spinning the Photo Disc at PokeStops and Gyms.

Adventure Sync is one of the many new features Niantic introduced to Pokemon Go in 2018. When enabled in the settings menu, it allows the game to keep track of the distance you’ve walked even when it’s idle, making it much easier–and much less taxing on your phone’s battery–to hatch Eggs.

Before the Hatchathon ends, Niantic will host Pokemon Go’s first Community Day of 2019. That event takes place on Saturday, January 12, and features increased spawns of the Gen 2 starter Totodile. Moreover, you’ll be hatch Eggs at a quarter of their typical required distance during the Community Day, which means you’ll potentially be able to earn a ton of Stardust and Candy thanks to the ongoing Hatchathon bonuses.

With January’s arrival, Niantic rolled out a new set of Field Research tasks for Pokemon Go. As in December, completing enough of these to achieve a Research Breakthrough can lead to an encounter with one of several Legendary Pokemon, including two new possibilities: Ho-Oh and Lugia. Meanwhile, the game’s latest Legendary, Heatran, will remain available in Raid Battles until January 15.

What might be considered the first episode of Black Mirror‘s fifth season, Bandersnatch, is out now on Netflix. But thanks to that episode and what a huge undertaking it was, we’ll have to wait for the rest the next installment of creator Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi series.

Bandersnatch debuted on Netflix on December 29 after a two-year effort, and anyone who’s spent a little time with it can see why its creation took so long: it’s a choose-your-own-adventure story, in which the viewer makes decisions about how the story will go at key intervals. Certain decisions trigger endings to the story, or automatically dial the viewer back to earlier points to make different choices so things don’t go quite so badly (or, since this is Black Mirror, sometimes worse).

All those choices and alternate storylines meant that Black Mirror is more like four episodes of the show, Brooker told The Hollywood Reporter. And making it took so much doing that the rest of the season has been pushed a little deeper into 2019–although just when this year it’ll actually see release on Netflix has not yet been announced.

“We knew going into it that it would be difficult and challenging and more complicated than a normal film that we would do. Even then, we underestimated,” Brooker told THR. “As the story expanded, I like to say that the story got longer and it got wider. So the whole thing started expanding a bit like an inflatable life raft in a small room.”

Though, like all Black Mirror episodes, Bandersnatch is a standalone story, it may well have an influence on the future of the series. Brooker said in the interview that Colin Ritman (Will Poulter), one of the characters in Bandersnatch, could show up in future Black Mirror episodes.

That discussion is a bit of a spoiler, so read on at your own risk.

In Bandersnatch, Colin suggests that the various choices and different storylines viewers are seeing are the result of multiple realities that influence each other. That would play into the meta view of the Black Mirror series as a whole, which is filled with self-referential Easter eggs even though all of the stories seem to take place in versions of our world that don’t share common technology or people. If Colin is right about his idea of multiple realities existing together, as Bandersnatch suggests, then seeing him in other Black Mirror episodes could extend that multiverse theory to the entire series.

“Ostensibly, he could go on forever, because he’s both dead and not dead,” Brooker said. “I like the idea that he could show up anywhere. I could see him popping up in ‘San Junipero’ or running around in ‘White Bear.'”

Still, we’re stuck waiting to find out when we’ll see any more Black Mirror, whether Bandersnatch’s characters make it into the rest of the season or not.

It’s possible the upcoming Pokemon Movie, Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution, will be a CGI remake of the original Pokemon film which first released in 1998 in Japan.

Eurogamer reports that fan speculation, after the release of the new teaser trailer for the movie, has leaned further into the idea that this new film will indeed be a remake.

Furthermore, almost all of the brief footage in the clip is CGI, leaving fans to speculate that perhaps this movie will be the first of its kind entirely animated using these graphics.

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It turns out Netflix’s new interactive Black Mirror movie, Bandersnatch, has some endings so hidden that even the people who made it can’t find them.

According to the The Hollywood Reporter, Bandersnatch director David Slade has revealed that some endings are so secret and difficult to get that they may never be viewed by audiences.

“There are scenes that some people just will never see and we had to make sure that we were OK with that,” explained Slade, adding “We actually shot a scene that we can’t access.”

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Following the cancellation of the PlayStation Vita and Wii U versions of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, the game’s Mac and Linux versions have now been canned as well. For those counting at home, that’s now four versions of the game that have been canceled (the Wii U edition was canceled in favour of Nintendo Switch version).

In a update posted on the game’s Kickstarter page, developer Koji Igarashi said the studio made the “tough decision” to cancel the Mac and Linux editions “due to challenges of supporting middleware and online feature support and making sure we deliver on the rest of the scope for the game.”

People who backed the game looking for a Mac or Linux version will be given the opportunity to change platforms; you can send an email to request a platform change; be sure to submit the request with the email address association with your pledge.

“We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and we hope for your understanding,” the developer said.

It’s unclear if refunds will be available or if the only option is to switch platforms.

Also in the blog post, Igarashi said development on Ritual of the Night has “reached its peak,” which sounds like it’s nearly finished.

“We are currently checking the performance of Bloodstained on each platform. Overall, we are done with enemy placement and entering the adjustment phase. But there are still many progression-blocking bugs that must be taken care of,” he said.

Igarashi worked at Konami for a long time, and there he worked on games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. Ritual of the Night is said to be a spiritual successor to that game.

Ritual of the Night is due out sometime in 2019 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. The game raised more than $5.5 million from its crowdfunding campaign back in 2015.