Month: August 2020

The August 28-30 weekend saw the biggest box office results of any weekend since the COVID-19 pandemic closed cinemas back in March, with The New Mutants leading a weekend that, while extremely quiet by pre-COVID standards, was big for 2020.

Variety is reporting that The New Mutants earned around $7 million for the weekend, following a $750,000 take from Thursday previews. This is well above the $4 million Unhinged earned the previous weekend. According to Box Office Mojo, cinemas around the US earned around $11 million over the weekend.

This is a funny ending to The New Mutants’ long, strange road to a cinema release–the film wrapped in 2017, and was initially planned for a 2018 release. It finally settled into an April 2020 release date after numerous delays–but then had to be pushed back.

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Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War will bring back many of the series’ previous characters, including Alex Mason and Frank Woods–but the parts have been recast. Now, the actor behind Frank Woods in previous Black Ops games has opened up at his disappointment at the recasting.

In a lengthy video, Burns opens up about how it feels to see someone else playing his character. Although he’s diplomatic about the new actor (who has not been publicly named), he’s also clearly disappointed.

In an excerpt posted to Reddit (and picked up on by Eurogamer), Burns talks about how his previous performances, and his knowledge of the character’s backstory, would have informed his performance.

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This episode of New Releases is taking a look at some of the biggest games launching in September. The new month starts off with a bang, with the action-packed Marvel’s Avengers, the amped-up NBA 2K21, and the trick-filled Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 all dropping on the same day. There are also two big re-releases on the horizon: Crysis Remastered and Mafia: Definitive Edition.

Marvel’s Avengers — September 4

Available on: PS4, Xbox One, PC, Stadia

As you’d expect, Avengers lets you team up with friends to take on threats together. There’s a whole squad of superheroes to choose from, including Iron Man, Black Widow, The Hulk, and more. Of course, each hero has their own set of powers and abilities, and you can rank them up by collecting loot and filling out skill trees.

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The world is mourning the tragic, unexpected death of Chadwick Boseman, who passed away from colon cancer at the age of 43 on August 28. The actor, who kept his diagnosis and fight under wraps, was diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016–meaning that he was fighting his own private battle during the filming of Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, and his non-Marvel work during this period.

Ryan Coogler, who directed Boseman in Black Panther, has penned a moving tribute to the actor on Marvel’s website, where he praises Boseman not just for his performance, but for his humanity, his creativity, and his kindness.

Coogler discusses how he “inherited” Boseman’s casting from Captain America: Civil War, saying that this is “something that I will forever be grateful for.” He recalls seeing Boseman’s performance in an unfinished cut of the movie, and how it convinced him to come on and do Black Panther. “I’ll never forget, sitting in an editorial suite on the Disney Lot and watching his scenes,” he writes. “His first with Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, then, with the South African cinema titan, John Kani as T’Challa’s father, King T’Chaka. It was at that moment I knew I wanted to make this movie.”

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Vigor is coming to PlayStation 4 and 5 later this year. The online shooter, which launched on Switch earlier this year, will also go free-to-play on Nintendo’s platform–right now, you can only play with a $20 Founder’s Pack purchase.

IGN has revealed, as part of their Gamescom 2020 coverage, that the game will come to the PS4 on November 25, and over the holiday period for PS5 (the system’s release date has not been announced yet). For Switch players, you’ll be able to play the game without a purchase from September 23.

Vigor is a multiplayer online loot-shooter set in a post-apocalyptic Norway, in which players have to team up to stay alive and overcome the challenges of the environment.

The Switch version released alongside Season 4 of the game; that will have likely ended by the time the PlayStation version of the game drops.

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Rocky IV, which originally released in 1985, is an extremely iconic 80s film. It’s got everything–huge hair, a banging soundtrack, and simmering tensions between the US and the Soviet Union that are ultimately overcome by a boxing match that unites both nations in their mutual love for Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa. And now, Stallone (who also directed) has announced plans for a 35th anniversary director’s cut of the film–but with the film’s single most 80s element cut out.

Stallone, who announced the Director’s Cut on Instagram, has responded to multiple comments asking him if the film’s robot, which is given to Rocky’s brother-in-law for his birthday early in the film, will make the cut. According to Stallone, the robot’s out–and people aren’t happy about it.

The robot is, in 2020, a wonderful bit of sci-fi ephemera. Thanks to its beep-and-boop synth music introduction, strange alien design, and impossibly advanced A.I. (the robot seems immediately aware of Paulie, and is somehow able to recognize its surroundings), people have grown very fond of it.

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Twelve Minutes, the upcoming adventure game from Annapurna Interactive set inside a time loop that players experience repeatedly, has some major Hollywood stars in it–James McAvoy, Daisy Ridley, and Willem Dafoe. Now, in a new behind-the-scenes video, McAvoy, Ridley, and creative director Luis Antonio have talked more about what to expect from the game.

Antonio says that originally the game was smaller in scope: “It was going to be a short game, and I was doing everything.” However, he eventually realized that if he could “go a little further,” things could get more interesting, and more options would be available to him. According to an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Antonio started working on the concept back in 2013.

The video, below, shows that while Ridley and McAvoy recorded together, they did so while separated by a barrier. Dafoe recorded his lines separately in Rome. According to McAvoy, the game is “about the danger of truly examining within,” and Ridley says that the game is about how you deal with your own truth and the truth of those around you, saying it will mean “different things for different people.”

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