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There are very few unexplored frontiers for the iconic first-person shooter. Microsoft Word, an Ikea smart lightbulb, even tractors are fair game. But this is the first time I’ve seen Doom running on a modular synthesizer. Don’t be fooled by the laptop, it’s just streaming video from the synth.
We just got a first look at Blade Runner 2099, and now Apple has finally shown an initial glimpse of its adaptation of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It’s a quick, minute-long trailer, but it does at least include a date: the show will start streaming on January 22nd.
In addition to the new season, three extended-length episodes have also been greenlit, including a Christmas special for 2027. And, unlike season 13, this one won’t drop in one giant, bingable chunk. Season 14 will return to weekly episodes.
We heard the Adult Swim psychedelic thriller about the medical industry would be returning, but that was way back in March of 2025. At Comic-Con, it was revealed that said return would be happening in “early 2027,” and we even got a quick peek at what’s to come.
After joining Fred Again for an absolutely incredible DJ set at USB002 earlier this year, Bangalter is making another helmet-free appearance this year, sitting down with Devonté Hynes (aka Blood Orange) for an interview on the A24 podcast. The two talk about the art of scoring movies, the challenge of making synths sound soulful, and more.
The comedian and artist behind “Planet of the Bass” and my personal favorite, “Selekta,” has an absolutely incredible sendup parodying Paul Simon’s Graceland jaunt to Africa. Gordon is popularly compared these days to Weird Al but his ability to embed authentically in genre is even more sophisticated. He’s a shapeshifter who does real homework on his parodies. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
During a Comic-Con panel about the film’s return to theaters, the director reiterated his hatred of all things AI, telling the crowd:
“What we’re protecting is the beauty and the redeeming power of art. It’s not about who gets the job. We are protecting a lineage of art. If we cut a generation of people from learning their craft, you’re cutting the rest of the history of that medium away from them for what? … I chose good. You have to put in time. You have to do every element by hand. A human made a decision of depth.”
The latest entry in the series was given a firm release date at Comic Con 2026, after being revealed during a Sony State of Play showcase in early June. Unlike previous God of War titles, this one won’t focus on angry dad Kratos, instead following the more dexterous mom Laufey.
He’s hard at work on the upcoming Beat Gems, a gorgeous coffee-table book about the history of drum machines.
After showing off its new Blade Runner 2099 series, Amazon also put out a trailer for the impending third season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The show returns to Prime Video on November 11th.
How could anyone have known that LeBron James would choose Philadelphia as his next NBA team? Well, there were signs.
Happy new latter-career Strokes album release, my fellow olds. But the Avalanches dropping a rad, new song with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O? That’s the purest I-DJed-At-My-College-Radio-Station-In-2006 energy that we’ve got.
This single-serving site, IMAXXING, lets you punch in your closest theater, a few parameters, and a notification window to get an email alert when seats to The Odyssey are available — theoretically a handy, low-stakes use of AI agents. (You’ll just have to ignore the image of Clavicular as Odysseus and the repeated incorrect usage of “frame mogging” on the webpage.)
Does it work? I signed up, so we’ll see if I can get a ticket for the Lincoln Square AMC in the next month. Similarly, OpenAI has a social video about how to set up an agent to check for tickets too.
[IMAXXING The Odyssey]
US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a decision Thursday extending her temporary restraining order to a total of 28 days, report The Wrap and Variety. The mega media merger is paused for now due to lawsuits by a group of state AGs and the Writers’ Guild of America, as the judge plans to “hear the two motions for preliminary injunction on the same schedule” and has scheduled a hearing for August 3rd.
Disclosure: The Verge’s editorial staff is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.
Though Avatar: Seven Havens was originally slated to debut some time in 2027, Paramount has given the series a new October 9th premiere date — which is previously when Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender was going to drop before it leaked onto the internet — and released a tantalizing new teaser.
Amazon’s Blade Runner streaming series has been in the works for ages, but it’s starting to feel a little more real. Entertainment Weekly just dropped the first images from the show, featuring stars Michelle Yeoh and Hunter Schafer, while also confirming that Blade Runner 2099 is expected to come out this year.
The acclaimed documentarian who’s taken on Enron, Elizabeth Holmes, and so many more is finally showing Musk. It almost wrapped up in 2025, but then… Premiering at the 83rd Venice Film Festival in September, the “hit piece” (according to Elon Musk in 2023) clocks in at 232 minutes. There’s a lot of ground to cover. Absent from the VFF line-up: Luca Guadagnino’s film about Sam Altman, Artificial.
Apple announced that one of its biggest early hits will be coming back for a fifth and final season in 2027. The Morning Show premiered alongside Apple TV as one of its prestige plays, with a notably star-studded cast. The news comes the same day Apple announced a new dating series.
The internet’s favorite dictionary just dropped a new word game, Tagline — and, surprisingly, there’s not a definition in sight. The game consists of three increasingly difficult clues with hangman-style answers to guess. The twist is that all the solutions are made up entirely from the same seven letters.
[Tagline | Merriam Webster]
Halo: Campaign Evolved is excellent, but it’s launching at a very awkward time.
The final Coyote vs. Acme trailer underlines how much the movie’s really about consumer safety — a very topical subject that David Zaslav apparently didn’t think would resonate with audiences. The movie’s out August 28th.
The streamer announced its first dating show, called The Last Person on Earth, which it describes as an “eight-episode dating documentary series” about how opposites attract. No word on when it will release, but it’s part of a steady push from Apple to make its streaming service more mainstream.
That’s the sound of the Splatoon series exploring a new genre with Splatoon Raiders, which is Nintendo’s take on looter shooters. I quite enjoyed my time with the game, but you can check it out for yourself now, as it launches today on the Switch 2.
Mattel’s older Mega line of building sets included a couple of Halo sets featuring the Warthog, but Amazon Australia leaked a larger and more detailed 935-piece buildable UNSC M12 Warthog that’s part of Mattel’s recent Brick Shop line. There’s no pricing, but the model includes working independent suspension and customizable detailing.
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It’s already been a pretty great year for horror, and that looks to continue with the new Resident Evil, helmed by Weapons director Zach Cregger. The latest trailer makes the movie seem both like a new twist on the franchise, and also like it’s pulling inspiration from the most recent games.
An interview with ‘Sheep in the Box’ director Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Sure, it’s just a poster, but should Ryan Gosling’s “La La Hand” been kept as it was?
.catalyst_:
I know it doesn’t matter, and he has expressed that he’d like it changed, but in a world where AI can change anything you want in a second, it feels like an actor’s intentional choice at the time of production is important. That hand being wrong takes away from the moment that this piece of art was made in.
Again probably doesn’t matter, I’m sure all parties are consenting. It is okay to make a mistake and have that mistake live and breathe, it makes the art just a little more human, and that is so important.
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While Paramount’s $110 billion WBD merger is suddenly on hold in the US, in Europe, the European Commission is ready to allow it after Paramount agreed to concessions including giving up its stake in United International Pictures within 13 months of the deal closing.
[European Commission]
If there was any doubt that DC Studios’ Clayface feature was going to be a proper body horror, the movie’s latest trailer makes it pretty clear that director James Watkins has cooked up something that’s going to make your skin crawl.
The colorful platformer Poinpy, which comes from the developer behind Downwell, was one of the titles that Netflix cut loose when it moved on from indie games. But now it has been resurrected with a new version for both iOS and Android that’s not only free, but available right now.
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This is a story about how AI destroyed a long-running site of film data. It’s not just that search no longer refers traffic or that the site itself, The Numbers, is getting scraped. It’s also that there’s no way to defend 30-year-old webpages against malicious actors attempting to get the data early so they could win their Polymarket bets.
[Stephen Follows]
In what seems very much like a desperate attempt to save face after failing to convince the world that Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is a bad film, Elon Musk says that Grok Imagine will generate a “historically-accurate” adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. One can only imagine what “historically-accurate” means here.
The actor has expressed regret over the flat positioning of his hand in the La La Land poster over the years. Maybe he’s joking, but Lionsgate has now corrected it anyway, unveiling a tweaked design for the movie’s 10th anniversary that’s replacing the previous version “across every platform in the world.”
The ESPN, National Geographic, and Pixar divisions are among the most impacted according to Deadline, making this the second round of cuts this year since Josh D’Amaro took over the Disney CEO role in March. That Pixar blow comes despite Toy Story 5 earning almost $1 billion so far.
