The Verge’s entertainment section collects the latest news from the worlds of pop culture, music, movies, television, and video games. Whether you want to know what to watch on Netflix or how to make the most of your streaming service budget, the entertainment section acts a reliable source. There’s simply too much to read, watch, hear, and play. Let us be your tour guide.
The streaming service is having a moment, but it needs plenty of hits to compete with the likes of Netflix and Disney.
The streaming service is having a moment, but it needs plenty of hits to compete with the likes of Netflix and Disney.
A new partnership with licensing house Merlin has given artists on labels like Sub Pop, Warp, Epitaph, Domino, Stones Throw, Ninja Tune, Mad Decent, Polyvinyl Records and more the “option to participate” in Spotify’s “superfan” remix tool, which launched in May with UMG as the first participant.
The game launches on Switch 2 on October 27th. Microsoft says there will be a “digital upgrade path” for players who own the game on the original Switch, though it’s planning to share more details on that later.
VILE: Exhumed had been banned last year following pressures from payment processors affecting Valve and other platforms, though the game was made free to download from its website. From the website, you can now sign up to be notified about an upcoming CD-ROM release, as reported by Polygon. It will cost $9.99 plus taxes and shipping when it’s available.
The new Pokémon book Pokécology has lots of fun details about various pocket monsters, but as Bulbapedia notes, some of the math might be off. I don’t know enough to check the numbers in the thread myself, but I know enough about Pokémon to say that maybe Spheal is just being a goofy guy.
Xbox Insiders will be able to choose if they want game chat and party chat audio in their captures, according to a blog post. Players can individually control if their voice is included in a capture.
The post also includes details about new ways to their sort achievement history, the ability to restore previous versions of cloud saves, and an upgrade to wishlists that now lets you add up to 1,000 games.
Bud Cole has been catching some flak over comments he made to T3 about AI’s role in music. Now he’s attempting to clarify what he meant. You can read his full statement provided to The Verge at the bottom of our post from this weekend, but here’s the gist:
If AI has a role, it should only be as a tool that helps beginners learn and gives seasoned artists new ways to explore, refine and experiment with their own creative ideas. If it can help a beginner understand a difficult chord or practice one more day instead of putting the guitar back in its case, then that’s something worth exploring. But let me be clear: every creative idea starts with people, and music starts and ends with people. It always will.
During an earnings call on Wednesday, Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro reiterated the company’s plan to make Disney Plus the “digital centerpiece” of the company by incorporating “games, merchandise, and other experiences” into the app. “We expect to introduce elements of this expanded ecosystem beginning in spring of 2027,” D’Amaro said.
The March 2nd start date will cost Paramount millions of dollars, as it must pay $7 million each day the deal doesn’t close after September 30th.
Separately, Paramount revealed in its Q2 2026 earnings report (pdf) that its streaming service gained 2 million subscribers over the past few months and will soon add a short-form video feed, similar to HBO Max and Netflix.
Verge staff had a long chat yesterday about our memories at the movies, and we’ve already received some wonderful and touching stories from readers. Thank you for sharing! We’d love to hear more — please jump into the comments in the original post found here:
If you said that in your head in a weird little voice, good news: Dropout is now streaming Don Hertzfeldt’s legendary animated films, from Rejected to World of Tomorrow. Paper Trail, which just won the short film category at the Annecy Festival, will be available September 1st.
One day we will have a talk with the people who don’t understand what science fiction is (writing about politics with plausible deniability). Until then, please enjoy Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains,” originally published in Collier’s in 1950 and taking place on April 28th, 1985. In The Martian Chronicles, the date is revised to August 4, 2026 and guess what! That’s today.
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[Library of Short Stories]
It’s the first company to reach the audio streaming milestone, showing 9 precent year-over-year growth in premium subscribers. Monthly active users climbed to 777 million, up 12 percent since the same quarter last year.
Deadline reports that Dave Bautista is in talks to take over the role, which has been vacant ever since original star Ryan Hurst was seriously injured on set. There’s no official word on casting from Amazon just yet.
Storing your many items in Pokopia is a huge chore, even if you like organizing. But the free update on August 5th will introduce a new shared storage item — anything stored inside will be accessible from other iterations of that item. That means a lot less running around trying to remember where you put all your copper.
According to Variety, the series will be a spin-off of Amazon’s 2024 Secret Level anthology series, which includes a Warhammer episode. It’s in development alongside the live-action Warhammer project Cavill’s also working on, and reportedly features the Deathwatch, “an elite group of Space Marines that specialize in hunting down alien threats.”
Nintendo’s next big Switch 2 exclusive — Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave — is also the subject of the company’s next Direct showcase. It streams August 4th at 10AM ET and will last around 20 minutes, according to Nintendo. The game, meanwhile, is launching on September 17th.
Tom Holland’s fourth stint as the web-slinging superhero brought in $927m in worldwide ticket sales, with $355m earned in North America alone. That makes it the second most lucrative opening weekend of all time both domestically and globally, behind only 2019’s Avengers: Endgame at $1.22b.
Bud Cole also compared learning cover songs to AI training data in a controversial interview.
Design firm Pen & Pixel was behind more than 20,000 album covers between the early ‘90s and 2000s. They were the go-to for Cash Money and No Limit, creating the gaudy diamond-encrusted covers for Master P’s “MP da Last Don” and Juvenile’s “400 Degreez.”
Music-playing robots are nothing new. It’s been 13 years since Compressorhead went viral, after all. But this DIY project from Reddit user MegCell is still pretty impressive. The melody isn’t hard-coded, either. Instead, the robot can read MusicXML files, meaning, theoretically, it can play almost any song you want.
The author’s latest book, Good Grief, Pass the Bread, Mom Is Dead, finds humor in difficult times.
Those are the words of John Oliver in The Hollywood Reporter, who has been at the helm of one of the best news shows ever to appear on television. Oliver’s contract just got extended another year. It’s an important life raft for his incisive news program, especially as the Ellison family continues to take over media in this country and threatens to ruin even more institutions.
Batman: Caped Crusader - Chronicles lets you and up to three friends tackle mysteries based on the Caped Crusader Prime Video show. It’s a clear example of Amazon’s recent push to tie its gaming efforts more closely with its streaming properties.
The writing has been on the wall about Marvel’s Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali being dead in the water, but in a new interview with GQ, the actor explains why he’s done talking about the project falling apart:
Those questions are for them. They didn’t want to do it, so they should answer that question.
