It’s time to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and Duke Nukem is all out of gum. The irreverent video game action hero is headed to the silver screen, THR reports, to be produced by Cobra Kai creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg. Duke Nukem dropped in 1991 as a platformer for the PC, and the 1993 sequel followed the same model. But 1996’s Duke Nukem 3D helped change video games forever, and alongside Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, it popularized the first person shooter, now one of the most dominant video game formats. Hail to the king, baby! Modeled on 1980s action heroes like Kurt Russell and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the titular Nukem fought off an alien invasion while firing off almost as many punchlines as bullets. Those attributes, coupl...
The Boys will be back in town for Season 4. One week after the third season debuted on Prime Video, the streamer officially announced the superhero satire has been renewed. In a press release, Prime Video also touted the show’s continued growth, revealing the worldwide audience has expanded 17% from Season 2 and 234% from the first season. “The Boys continues to push boundaries in storytelling while also being relentlessly entertaining and threading the needle on social satire that feels all too real,” said Vernon Sanders, head of global television at Amazon Studios, in a statement. “This stylized world of the series has incredible global reach and the viewership for opening weekend is proof of that. We are immensely proud of the cast and crew that has spawned a franchise for Prime Video, ...
Twisted Metal is hightailing it from your PlayStation to streaming. The long-running vehicular combat video game is being adapted into a live-action series for Peacock, with Will Arnett executive producing and starring as its cheerful villain Sweet Tooth. Sony Interactive Entertainment published the first Twisted Metal video game back in 1995. Now, we’re returning to “Lost Vegas” almost 30 years later, as Sweet Tooth still ravages the town with his unforgettable clown mask and disastrous ice cream truck. As previously announced, the half-hour action-comedy series will also star Anthony Mackie as protagonist John Doe, a smart-ass milkman whose two main goals are to make his deliveries and survive on the way. The Twisted Metal cast also includes Stephanie Beatriz as Quiet, a c...
Tuned-in Top Gun fans know that Val Kilmer and his character Tom “Iceman” Kazansky have a few things in common, and perhaps their most notable similarity is the fact that in Top Gun: Maverick, both of them have lost the ability to speak due to cancer. Kilmer does, however, have one line of spoken dialogue in the new sequel, and it took some artificial intelligence to bring it to life. Kilmer — whose throat cancer treatment reduced his voice to a rasp back in 2014 — announced last year that he had partnered with the software company Sonantic to realistically recreate his old speaking voice for the documentary Val. Using hours and hours of audio, this process was used again for Kilmer’s appearance in Top Gun: Maverick. Sonantic used what they call a “voice engine” to teach the...
Tom DeLonge loves aliens almost as much as he loves dick jokes, and it seems he’s managed to combine these passions in his directorial debut Monsters of California. An absolutely bonkers teaser trailer is out now, and it comes stocked with UFOs, bikini models, and beloved comedian Richard Kind. As far as alien flicks go, Monsters of California seems pitched closer to a horror comedy than a sci-fi romp. It follows teenager Dallas Edwards (Jack Samson) as he investigates paranormal activity in the SoCal area. “Maybe UFOs aren’t what we think they are,” his friend Riley (Jared Scott) says in the trailer. There’s also evidence of DeLonge’s unique sense of humor. One character quips, “That’s classified information. I’d tell you, but then I’d have to fuck your dad.” Spea...
Warner Bros. are getting their casting squared away on the film adaptation of the blockbuster — and block buster — video game Minecraft. As The Hollywood Reporter notes, Jason Momoa, a man who looks like he was carved out of stone, is in final negotiations to play the lead role. Plot details haven’t yet been unearthed. But Jared Hess, best known for helming Napoleon Dynamite, is set to direct. Production will come from Dune producer Mary Parent and Godzilla vs. Kong producer Roy Lee. Minecraft first became public in 2009 and received a full launch by Sweden’s Mojang Studios 2011. The massively popular game sets players in a blocky, algorithmically-generated world, mining resources to create earthworks, machines, and structures that range from th...
Amazon’s Jack Reacher series is coming back for a second season. Just days after their new adaptation of Lee Child’s beloved book series premiered on Prime Video, the studio has announced that Season 2 of Reacher is on the way. In a press release, Amazon boasted that Reacher, which stars Alan Ritchson as the titular veteran military police investigator, quickly became Prime Video’s top five most-watched series ever in the US and globally. With all eight episodes dropping at once, Amazon also says it’s one of the most binged Original series ever. Written by showrunner and executive producer Nick Santora, Reacher follows Jack Reacher’s transition from the military into civilian life in small-town Georgia, where he inadvertently gets caught up in a criminal conspiracy. It’s bas...
Netflix is going way, way back in time for their next original series. Today, the streamer has shared the official trailer for Vikings: Valhalla, an action-drama series that tells the tale of some of history’s most heroic explorers. Set over a thousand years ago in the early 11th century, and over a hundred years after the events of Michael Hirst’s History Channel series Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla stars Sam Corlett (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) as Leif Eriksson, Frida Gustavsson as his sister Freydis Eriksdotter, and Leo Suter as Nordic prince Harald Sigurdsson. The series sees the trio travel from Kattegat to England and beyond, clashing with English royalty over their conflicting Christian and pagan beliefs. Above all, the Vikings must fight for their own survival and glory on these t...
The Pitch: At the end of Season 3, things were changing for the inexplicably-karate-obsessed denizens of Encino, California. Sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove) is now fully in command of Cobra Kai, with Johnny Lawrence’s (William Zabka) troubled son Robby (Taylor Buchanan) now his trusted sempai; the school’s firmly back on its ‘strike hard, strike fast, no mercy’ kick, especially in a softened Lawrence’s absence. But as a new year (and a new karate tournament) dawns, Lawrence has one way of getting Kreese out of town for good: if either he or his former-rival-turned-reluctant-ally Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) can get their dojos to win the All-Valley, Kreese is gone forever. It’s a tall order, considering that a) Johnny and Daniel-san’s decades-long rivalry still simmers below the su...
The Pitch: Here’s the problem with reviewing The Matrix Resurrections: At this point, we basically have to accept that the franchise peaked with the first installment. This isn’t meant as an insult, but an honest statement of fact– this is what happens when a film is a masterpiece. If 1999’s The Matrix is a nearly perfect movie, almost transcendent at some points with how it blended genre and technology in service of its storytelling, then yeah, it may be impossible to top it. What makes Resurrections such a fascinating viewing experience, though, is the fact that the movie knows this. And, rather than try to shift the narrative to some different angle on the original, director Lana Wachowski, who co-wrote the script with David Mitchell and Aleksandar Hemon, decides to take on that problem...
3,2,1, Let’s Jam: In a far-flung future where the solar system has been colonized and Earth has become uninhabitable, civilization has spread out into a new Wild West filled with grifters, terrorists, con men, and criminal syndicates. Among the rabble, there are a few intrepid souls who set out to collect the most dangerous bounties in the system… or at least scrounge up enough cash to keep their ship running. You might call them bounty hunters; they prefer cowboys. Two such cowboys are the crew of the run-down starship BeBop: Spike Spiegel (John Cho), a former Syndicate enforcer starting his life over, and Jet Black (Mustafa Shakir), a divorced ex-cop trying to make ends meet and be a good dad to his daughter. But the more they try to run from their shadowy pasts, the more those past...