Netflix is partnering with Legendary Entertainment for new anime shows based on the new Tomb Raider games and the Kong movie Skull Island.
The Tomb Raider anime will follow Lara Croft’s adventures after the events of the Crystal Dynamics reboot trilogy, which wrapped up with 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider. The Skull Island anime, meanwhile, follows a shipwrecked crew on an island who face off against monsters and Kong himself. This was also the plot for the 2017 film Kong: Skull Island.
According to Deadline, Brian Duffield (The Babysitter) is writing and producing the Skull Island series. The Witcher: Blood Origin’s Tasha Huo is writing the Tomb Raider anime series. You can see Netflix’s announcement tweets for both shows below.
The first images from the upcoming Netflix fantasy series Shadow and Bone have been revealed. The eight-episode show is an adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s novels and it hits the service on April 23.
The pictures were tweeted by Netflix, and they reveal the show’s main characters. The series is set in the war-torn land of Ravka, a world inspired by 18th century Russia, and it focuses on an orphan soldier named Alina who discovers she wields powerful magical powers. Upcoming British actor Jessie Mei Li plays Alina, and the cast also includes Ben Barnes (Westworld) as the powerful General Aleksander “The Darkling” Morozova and Archie Renaux (Morbius) as tracker Malyen “Mal” Oretsev. Check the images below:
Welcome to the world of Shadow and Bone where there are dangerous forces and powerful magic at play – summoners, sharpshooters and thieves. Enter the world of the Grishaverse on April 23 pic.twitter.com/jw3XnumlK1
Shadow and Bone also stars Kit Young (Endeavour), Amita Suman (The Outpost), and Freddy Carter (Pennyworth) as members of the criminal Six of Crows gang. Shadow and Bone adapts two separate book series by Bardugo, known collectively as the Grishaverse–the Grisha trilogy and the Six of Crows duology. Shadow and Bone was the first Grishaverse novel and it was published in 2012.
Netflix has announced Skull Island, a new anime series set in the Legendary MonsterVerse. It will be produced by Powerhouse Animation, the studio behind Castlevania.
A shipwrecked crew, an island of monsters, and one king to rule them all. Skull Island is a new anime series set in @Legendary’s Monsterverse from @PowerhouseAnim.
As detailed by the tweet, the series will involve a shipwrecked crew landing on an island full of monsters, where one king rules them all. That ‘king’ is likely to be King Kong himself, considering Skull Island is the giant gorilla’s home.
Skull Island has been featured in numerous films, starting in the 1933 movie King Kong. Most recently, it was the setting of Kong: Skull Island, and modern film fans will also recall it being a large part of Peter Jackson’s King Kong. The Kong: Skull Island version of the setting is officially part of the Legendary MonsterVerse, and so may well be the starting point for this show, which is also an official part of the universe.
No images or artwork has yet been shown, but Powerhouse Animation has produced a variety of well-liked shows, including Netflix’s Castlevania adaptation and Blood of Zeus. The studio is based in Austin, Texas, but has produced animation in a similar style to Japanese anime studios.
EA has announced the newest studio in its stable, Full Circle, and the Vancouver-based, but also globally focused, studio will be the team behind the recently announced new Skate game.
While it remains unclear whether the newest entry in the Skate franchise will be Skate 4, or reboot of the franchise, or something else, EA confirmed the Full Circle team will be led by Daniel McCulloch, the former Head of Box Live at Microsoft. Returning Skate producers Deran Chung and Cuz Parry remain on board, having appeared in the Skate sequel’s announcement video at EA Play 2020.
Full Circle’s Studio Logo
“The fans wished Skate back into existence and we want them to feel involved in the process from development to game launch and beyond. We want them to feel like they are a part of Full Circle,” McCulloch said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “We’re all about having fun and making great games that people want to play with their friends. And, we’re looking for more developers to help us build compelling worlds for players to explore.”
The new studio is currently hiring for various positions including artists, designers, and engineers, and while it’s based in Vancouver, is “embracing a geo-diverse team” with members involved in development “around the globe.”
Full Circle joins EA Sports and Respawn Entertainment as the third EA Studio in the Canadian city.
Unfortunately, there’s no new word on development on the next Skate thus far, or any additional details about the vision for the upcoming game, but late last year we learned the new Skate may have a focus on user-generated content. At the time, EA’s Andrew Wilson discussed how the new Skate was in “very early development” but that trends within the skateboarding world could fit into the scope of the new game.
“You take a game like Skate, and while skateboarding in and of itself has tremendous appeal to a huge, global audience, there’s another secular trend that’s happening inside our industry around user-generated content, open-world, and interaction,” Wilson said last June. “So for many people, you think about skating as a starting point that has appeal, but you start to build in user-generated content, exploration, and community on top of that and that expands the opportunity exponentially.”
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Jonathon Dornbush is IGN’s Senior News Editor, host of Podcast Beyond!, and PlayStation lead. Talk to him on Twitter @jmdornbush.
The Skate franchise has a new studio that will lead development on the upcoming game, publisher EA confirmed. Called Full Circle, the “geo-diverse” team will be in charge of bringing the iconic skateboarding simulator back to life with a brand-new entry the publisher announced back in June 2020.
Leading Full Circle is studio general manager Daniel McCulloch, the former head of Xbox Live. McCulloch will be joined by Cuz Parry and Deran Chung, who served as the creative forces behind the Skate franchise and integral parts of the development of the three original games. Though based in Vancouver, the team is staffed by employees from around the world to “embrace a geo-diverse team and culture” focused on the next evolution of the Skate series.
In a press release announcing the new studio, McCulloch said Full Circle is looking for more developers to help out with “making great games that people want to play with the friends.”
The Division 2 is getting its next big update soon, and it includes improvements for people playing on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, new Resident Evil content, and more.
Announced by the game’s community developer on Twitter, title update 12.1 will launch on February 2 with a number of new additions. The patch adds 4K 60 FPS support for The Division 2 on next-gen consoles, while it also introduces the Resident Evil crossover event. The February 2 patch will also rebalance some of the Optimization Station costs.
No State of the Game tomorrow.
TU12.1 releases on Feb 2nd with the Resident Evil Apparel Event, a rebalance of the Optimization Station cost as well as 4K 60 FPS support for next gen consoles.
The European Consumer Organization has submitted a complaint to the European Commission about Nintendo Switch Joy-Con Drift, and is calling for a “Europe-wide investigation” into the issue.
The European Consumer Organization (BEUC) revealed the news on the organization’s website, noting that “nearly 25,000” complaints have been filed from Switch-owning consumers across Europe. If you’re unfamiliar with Joy-Con drift, it’s when the analog sticks on the console’s controllers register movements without input from the player.
The article reports that, according to testimonies from consumers, “in 88% of cases, the game controllers broke within the first two years of use.” This has led the BEUC to submit a complaint to the European Commission and national consumer protection authorities “for premature obsolescence and misleading omissions of key consumer information.”
The BEUC is further calling for a “Europe-wide investigation” into the Joy-Con Drift issue, asking Nintendo to “urgently address the premature failures of its product.” The article also suggests that the faulty controllers should be repaired for free by Nintendo.
Per the complaint letter submitted, the BEUC is asking the European Commission to “call on the national authorities to investigate Nintendo’s practices in their countries, launch a coordinated enforcement action and issue a joint position, which should request the company to change the design of their product, to effectively prevent its early obsolescence, and until then, to repair this product for free and properly inform consumers about the limited lifespan of the Joy-Con controllers.”
“Consumers assume the products they buy to last an appropriate amount of time according to justified expectations, not to have to pay for expensive replacements due to a technical defect,” said Monique Goyens, Director of the BEUC. “Nintendo must now come up with proper solutions for the thousands of consumers affected by this problem.”
Following the release of Wonder Woman 1984 on Christmas Day, HBO Max and HBO subscriber numbers jumped. Parent company AT&T has confirmed that the total number of HBO Max and HBO subscribers has now reached 41 million in the US and 61 million worldwide.
HBO Max had a particularly strong quarter, doubling the numbers from the end of the third-quarter of 2020 and reaching 17.2 million worldwide by the end of Q4.
Ubisoft has issued the new Title Update 3.0 for Watch Dogs: Legion on PC, with console versions of the patch coming sometime soon. The patch includes various fixes and improvements, but focuses mostly on preparing for a closed technical test for the upcoming online mode.
According to a post on the Ubisoft forums, the tech test will gather data on stability with a large sample size of players. The 3.0 update is coming to consoles too at some point, but the company notes that some of the changes might be rolled into a separate update on consoles as we approach the launch of the online mode.
The online co-op mode was originally planned to hit Watch Dogs shortly after launch, but Ubisoft ultimately delayed it to focus its efforts on patching single-player issues. It promised at the time that the online mode would come in early 2021.
