Amazon Prime Video has reportedly ordered a new animated anthology series that will feature short stories set within different, pre-existing video game worlds. The series is being created by Tim Miller, the same person behind Netflix’s popular Love, Death & Robots series and the first Deadpool movie.
Despite Eli Roth’s Borderlands’ abject failure at the box office, video game adaptations continue to endure! While riding high from the success of Fallout, Prime Video is partnering with Love, Death + Robots creator Tim Miller for the adult animated video game anthology Secret Level.
Miller’s new project follows the Love, Death + Robots formula in so much as it’s built on original short stories but set in video game worlds. Details about Secret Level remain a mystery, including which games Miller and his team intend to adapt. According to Deadline, Amazon Games’ New World, Spelunky, and Playstation titles could be a part of the series. It’s worth noting that Gamescom is coming up, and there’s a chance that Secret Level could be a part of the showcase’s opening night. Amazon MGM Studios and Blur Studio produce Secret Level. Dave Wilson serves as executive producer and supervising director.
Amazon Games’ New World: Aeternum is an action RPG on the supernatural island of Aeternum. Available to play on Steam, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles, New World: Aeternum lets players explore a thrilling open-world fantasy where players forge their destiny through combat, discovery, and magic. The game has a medieval and steampunk aesthetic, giving Elder Scrolls, Monster Hunter, and Baldur’s Gate vibes. If you’ve seen Love, Death + Robots, you’ll immediately see why Miller is game to adapt New World for the new series. It’s also an Amazon product, which could be part of the deal. I don’t know.
Meanwhile, Spelunky is a hard-as-f**k platformer with randomized levels that offer challenging experiences with every run-based excursion below ground. The game requires players to have lightning-fast reflexes and damn-near precognitive abilities to mine levels while looking for traps, enemies, and treasure. Despite its insane difficulty, Spelunky is massively popular, and players love the torture. I’ve tried playing Spelunky on several occasions and got my ass kicked. My friend Pete, however, dude is unstoppable.
What do you think about Tim Miller partnering with Prime Video for Secret Level? Is there a game you’d like to get a short story in the show? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Lionsgate will be bringing a new version of The Crow to theatres on August 23rd – and while we had previously been referring to this project as a remake, Lionsgate recently let it be known that this is not to be called a remake, but rather a new adaptation of the source material, the comic book series created by James O’Barr. With the release date just a week away, a clip has dropped online to give us a preview of another brutal action sequence, this one taking place in an opera house. You can check it out in the embed above.
Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) directed this version of The Crow, working from a screenplay by Oscar nominee Zach Baylin (King Richard). The film is produced by Victor Hadida, Molly Hassell, John Jencks, and Edward R. Pressman. Dan Farah serves as executive producer. Here’s the synopsis: Soulmates Eric (Bill Skarsgard) and Shelly (FKA twigs) are brutally murdered when the demons of her dark past catch up with them. Given the chance to save his true love by sacrificing himself, Eric sets out to seek merciless revenge on their killers, traversing the worlds of the living and the dead to put the wrong things right.
As the synopsis mentions, Bill Skarsgard plays the lead character and is joined in the cast of The Crow by singer FKA twigs, who takes on the role of Shelly, the love of Eric’s life. Danny Huston (Yellowstone) plays the lead villain. David Bowles (Brothers), Isabella Wei (1899), Laura Birn (A Walk Among the Tombstones), Sami Bouajila (The Bouncer), and Jordan Bolger (Peaky Blinders) are also in the cast.
Based on the comic book series created by James O’Barr, the first version of The Crow was released in 1994. Following the production of three sequels (each about a different resurrected character), a redux was first announced in late 2008… then it had to make a long journey through development hell. Several screenwriters came and went, scripts were written and scrapped, studios went bankrupt, and directors like Stephen Norrington, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, Corin Hardy, and Francisco Javier Gutiérrez were all involved along the way. Actors up for the lead role during the long development period included Bradley Cooper, Mark Wahlberg, Tom Hiddleston, Luke Evans, Jason Momoa, and Jack Huston.
What did you think of the opera clip from The Crow reboot? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
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PLOT: Seeking to escape their grim fate as indentured workers for Weyland-Yutani on a lifeless rock, a group of young colonists scavenge an abandoned space station, only to discover a terrifying secret that threatens to pick them off one by one – or worse.
REVIEW: As far as this critic is concerned, there are two perfect Alien movies: the first and the badass James Cameron sequel. I tend to flip-flop between which one I prefer (it usually depends on the one I saw most recently), but both films are among the most perfectly conceived and executed blockbusters of all time—the sequels, though- well, are a mixed bag at best. There have been interesting ones (Alien 3), terrible ones (Alien: Resurrection and the AVP movies) and frustrating ones (the Ridley Scott prequels), but until now, there have been no outstanding ones. As such, the fact that director Fede Alvarez was able to make a slam-bang Alien sequel that trumps every other film in the franchise, save the first two, is cause for celebration. Yet, it does suffer from the fact that its director was perhaps hampered in his effort to make a lean and mean Alien movie with an ill-advised directive to connect the film to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. This leaves the film feeling like it’s 75% kick-ass, and 25% space bio-engineering nonsense.
However, the good outweighs the bad by a large margin. One thing Alvarez does that none of the other films have so far is it effectively conveys how hopeless life in the future Alien world has become (something which the upcoming TV series may elaborate on). Our young crew is shown to be comprised of orphans whose parents expired due to terrible working conditions and have left their offspring little more than indentured servants. Our heroine, Cailee Spaeny’s Rain, is one such victim of the heartless “company,” with only her malfunctioning synthetic brother, David Jonsson’s Andy, left to keep her company.
In the movie, she falls in with a crew of scavengers led by an old flame, Archie Renaux’s Tyler, who wants to provide a better life for his younger sister, Isabela Merced’s Kay. He thinks he’s stumbled upon a can’t-lose scheme where they can salvage life pods from a derelict station, but he needs Andy’s tech to get the job done, leading to an alliance with Rain. Of course, it doesn’t take long for them to arrive at the space station and find themselves at the mercy of face huggers and xenomorphs.
This action is brutal, with Fede Alvarez making it one of the gorier Alien movies. You’ve never seen a chestburster depicted in such an agonizing, painful way. The cast is terrific, with Spaeny’s Rain far from the Ripley clone you might expect. She’s just a kid out of her element but rises to the occasion without becoming a superhero or losing her vulnerability. Likewise, Renaux’s Tyler, who could have been depicted as a slimy crook, has pure intentions and also sports a heroic streak, making him a believable partner for Rain. Poor Isabela Merced also makes a huge impression, with her being put through the physical wringer more than anyone else in the film, with many of the movie’s most significant scare moments involving her.
But, of the cast, the one who nearly walks away with the movie is David Jonsson as Andy. Initially simple and sweet, he gets an upgrade on the space station and has to wrestle with two battling sets of programming, with him kind of a cross between Ian Holm’s cold-blooded Ash and Lance Henriksen’s kindly Bishop. It’s a heck of a performance, and he and Spaeny deliver what should go down as iconic franchise performances that also work as their own.
The movie also benefits from superb cinematography by Galo Olivares, which is very much in the vein of the original Alien. Benjamin Wallfisch’s score is the best in the series since James Horner’s take on Aliens.
Alas, with Alien: Romulus being packed with so much awesomeness, it’s a drag when clunkier elements that seem lifted from another movie get worked in. There’s one additional character that hasn’t been revealed in the ads or early footage, who’s a callback to the earlier films, but the CGI depicting this character is poorly realized. That’s a shame, as the FX work is impeccable otherwise, and part of me wonders whether it was an eleventh-hour addition. As soon as you see the character introduced, you’ll immediately know what I’m referring to, and I bet this will be the one element of the movie it will get attacked for.
There’s also far more continuity with Prometheus and Alien: Covenant than expected, with it feeling like producer Ridley Scott still has a lot of say over how the franchise proceeds (for better or worse). It feels like a distraction from an otherwise excellent Alien movie, and the downside is that towards the end, the xenomorphs we all love watching feel secondary in favour of another threat which seems lifted out of one of the prequels.
These added-on elements make Alien: Romulus more of a mixed bag than you’d think, but I hesitate to put any of the blame on Fede Alvarez. When he’s allowed to do his own thing, which seems to be the case for about three-quarters of the movie, it’s one of the best Alien movies ever. But, when he’s shoehorned in a bunch of tacked-on mythology, it starts to suffer. At any rate, it’s probably still the third-best movie of the franchise, and hopefully, it will lead to more films set in this world by Alvarez, who seems like a natural successor to Ridley Scott and James Cameron as far as this series goes.
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After outsmarting a smoke monster, tolerating Sawyer’s shenanigans, and appearing in a handful of films and TV series since Lost left the air, Matthew Fox will return to screens for The Assassin, a drama series from writer-producer John Glenn (SEAL Team). The project, in development at Max, finds Fox leading the charge.
John Glenn wrote The Assassin script based on the book series by British novelist Tom Wood. The Assassin focuses on a cunning assassin known only as Victor (Fox), who, after being betrayed by an anonymous client, finds himself relentlessly hunted by CIA operatives and a contract killer who’s as good at making people disappear as he is. Victor must look inside himself to find his humanity in an impossible situation. Only then can he hope to identify his pursuer and confront the dangers ahead.
Victor appears in eleven novels and two short stories written by Wood. The books have sold millions, making Victor a character on par with figures like Jason Bourne, Jack Reacher, and other iconic badasses on the page. Glenn is the project’s showrunner and executive producer alongside Fox and Wood.
While Fox made his name while playing Charlie Salinger on Fox’s Party of Five, his Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated role as Dr. Jack Shephard on J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof’s Lost made him a household name. From 2004 to 2010, scores of fans tuned in for every episode of the ensemble mystery’s twists and turns. Lost quickly became a cultural phenomenon, with Matthew Fox’s Dr. Jack Shepard at the center. While Lost had something of a Game of Thrones-style decline toward the series’ end, no one can deny that, at the height of its popularity, Lost was the watercooler show of the aughts.
Do you think Matthew Fox has what it takes to lead John Glenn’s The Assassin? Who should play the killer searching for Fox’s character throughout the series? Have you read any books in John Glenn’s novel series featuring Victor? If all goes well, Fox could return significantly to the TV series fold, and we’d love to see it. Let us know if you want to check Matthew Fox in The Assassin in the comments below.
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Viral Roblox dress-up game Dress to Impress first hit my radar a few months ago via TikTok algorithm. Several gameplay videos showed off what looked like an ‘00s-era Bratz game: big-lipped, big-headed femme characters with bedroom eyes in a variety of skimpy outfits walking down a runway and posing at the end of it…
Viral Roblox dress-up game Dress to Impress first hit my radar a few months ago via TikTok algorithm. Several gameplay videos showed off what looked like an ‘00s-era Bratz game: big-lipped, big-headed femme characters with bedroom eyes in a variety of skimpy outfits walking down a runway and posing at the end of it…
A former developer who worked on the older Grand Theft Auto games has revealed how all the blowing trash and debris in GTA 3 works and why it didn’t appear in San Andreas but did appear in another controversial Rockstar game, Manhunt.
A former developer who worked on the older Grand Theft Auto games has revealed how all the blowing trash and debris in GTA 3 works and why it didn’t appear in San Andreas but did appear in another controversial Rockstar game, Manhunt.
Being all things to all people is impossible. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to live up to people’s expectations, your efforts find a way of sabotaging your best intentions from the inside out. The pressure to perform regardless of your mental well-being often follows athletes like a relentless ghost. All it takes is one slip-up to send you on a downward spiral. In the case of Aaron Hernandez, the gridiron warrior learns the hard way that football dreams and crime don’t mix. FX’s American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez trailer digs deep into the athlete’s downfall for a cautionary tale about expectations, drugs, and throwing it all away.
The first installment of American Sports Story is based on the podcast Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez and Football Inc. from The Boston Globe and Wondery. The limited series charts the rise and fall of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez and explores the disparate strands of his identity, his family, his career, his suicide, and their legacy in sports and American culture.
FX‘s American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez trailer takes us inside the mind of one of the NFL’s most tragic and controversial players. When he was little, Aaron had big dreams of becoming a champion of the football field. He worked hard for his shot at the big time and achieved his goal alongside winning the admiration of others invested in his future. However, life has a way of catching up with you, and when others who don’t have your best interests in mind stir the pot, the consequences can be deadly. As Aaron’s life spirals out of control, he finds himself on the business end of a crime wave with alarming consequences.
Josh Rivera stars as Aaron Hernandez, the University of Florida player who becomes a three-season stand-out for the New England Patriots. The series also stars Jaylen Barron (Shayanna Jenkins), Lindsay Mendez (Tanya Singleton), Ean Castellanos (DJ Hernandez), Tammy Blanchard (Terri Hernandez), Tony Yazbeck (Urban Meyer), Patrick Schwarzenegger (Tim Tebow), Thomas Sadoski (Brian Murphy), Jake Cannavale (“Chris”) and Norbert Leo Butz (Bill Belichick).
Ryan Murphy executive produces American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez alongside Stuart Zicherman, Nina Jacobson, Brad Simpson, Alexis Martin Woodall, Eric Kovtun, Scott Robertson, and Carl Franklin.
American Sports Story: Aaron Hernandez debuts on FX on September 17. Are you familiar with Hernandez’s story? Are you interested in checking this out? Let us know in the comments section below.
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