A live-action adaptation of Totally Spies is now in production at Amazon. According to a report from Variety, Will Ferrell is the executive producer of the live-action series based on the popular 2000s animated series from French media company Banijay Kids, formerly known as Marathon Media.
The live-action Totally Spies will follow Sam, Clover and Alex as they balance saving the world as international spies working for the agency WOOHP with tackling schoolwork and social lives as college freshmen. No actors have been cast as any of the iconic girls, nor are writers attached to the project just yet.
The original Totally Spies was created by Vincent Chalvon-Demersay and David Michel, and it revolved around the three aforementioned teenage girls from Beverly Hills, California as they are recruited by WOOHP to solve worsening crimes that arise around the world. They’re equipped with spy gear disguised as women’s accessories such as hair dryers, high-heel shoes and lipstick. It’s like an animated Charlie’s Angels, except the girls actually see their boss in person.
Since its premiere in 2002, the series aired over 180 episodes, as well as spawned a prequel movie and a spin-off show, The Amazing Spiez. The seventh season of Totally Spies premiered in France last month after a nearly ten-year break, and it will air on Cartoon Network and Max in the US later this year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-is-developing-a-live-action-totally-spies-series-201623189.html?src=rss
Neopets has been trying to get back its once substantial userbase over the past year by fixing and relaunching its classic games, holding timely events and releasing new features meant to get people hooked on the virtual website again. Today, Neopets is launching a new storyline — or as the website calls it, a new "plot" — which is typically a site event that requires players to solve puzzles, fight opponents in the Battledome and do other activities in order to participate. Neopets says it spent the past three years crafting a narrative that "resonates with players from all walks of life" for the plot called "The Void Within."
The storyline will feature a new protagonist named Nyx who'll embark on a journey with players to explore "themes of community, family, inclusion, well-being and identity." Together, they'll have to find a way to banish the gray curse that's killing all the colors across the Neopets universe. As part of the event, players will get access to new items, like a range of diverse hairstyles, as well as pride and accessibility customization options, for their characters. The website has also removed outdated terms and lore used years ago, has given the Library Faerie a wheelchair and has introduced new social media mascots with accessibility items like hearing aids.
The Void Within starts rolling out today, with more episodes coming out one by one until early 2025. Neopets is also advising old players to log in if they haven't visited in recent years, because it's removing accounts that have been inactive for a decade by October, ahead of its 25th anniversary.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/neopets-is-back-with-a-new-storyline-thats-meant-to-foster-inclusivity-161213313.html?src=rss
The premise of A Quiet Place always seemed like great fodder for a game: make too much of a racket and a blind, noise-sensitive alien will most probably kill you. Six years after the original movie hit theaters, a video game spinoff is almost here. A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead is coming to PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S later this year.
Developer Stormind Games (Remothered, Batora: Lost Haven) has crafted a first-person horror adventure based on the movies. You'll play as a young woman who attempts to steer clear of those terrifying creatures while dealing with her inner fears and family turmoil. All you'll have to help you survive the aliens is whatever tools you can find, such as a flashlight or homemade noise detector. But as the movies and game trailer make clear, just a single noise can spell doom.
Publisher Saber Interactive first announced a video game version of A Quiet Place in 2021 and initially planned to release it in 2022. It took an extra couple of years and perhaps a change of studio (Saber initially said iLLOGIKA and EP1T0ME were working on the project), but The Road Ahead now seems to be just a few months away.
Meanwhile, a prequel movie will hit theaters later this month. A Quiet Place: Day One stars the brilliant Lupita Nyong'o and Joseph Quinn of Stranger Things fame.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/a-quiet-place-the-road-ahead-is-coming-to-pc-playstation-and-xbox-this-year-150813192.html?src=rss
Delicious in Dungeon just wrapped up its first season on Netflix, and we now have confirmation that there will be another. The studio behind the show shared on social media this week that a season two is coming, and it’s already in production. The anime, based on the manga by Ryoko Kui, follows a group of broke adventurers who end up eating monsters along their quest to save their friend from the belly of a dragon. It’s one of the most unexpectedly delightful things I’ve watched recently and, despite the questionable ingredients that often go into the meals, has some truly top-tier examples of mouthwatering anime foods.
🐲 DELICIOUS IN DUNGEON SEASON 2 🐲
🔥 Now in production! We want to thank you for supporting #DeliciousinDungeon!
— Delicious in Dungeon - Official (@dun_meshi_en) June 13, 2024
Delicious in Dungeon is produced by the Japaneses animation studio, Trigger, Inc. The first season got a 24-episode run with weekly releases, but it’s all available and ready for binge-watching now if you haven’t gotten around to it yet. The final episode dropped on Thursday. Just don’t go into it hungry.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sweet-theres-going-to-be-another-season-of-delicious-in-dungeon-224918513.html?src=rss
MGM+ has ordered an eight-episode series based on Stephen King’s 2019 novel, The Institute, Deadline reported this week. The novel follows the plight of 12-year-old Luke Ellis and a group of other children with telepathic and telekinetic abilities who have been kidnapped and held captive at a facility deep in the Maine woods, where their powers are being exploited. Their story becomes intertwined with that of an ex-cop Tim Jamieson. I really enjoyed this one when it came out, and as a lifelong King reader who has become hardened against the disappointment of terrible adaptations, I’m choosing to remain hopeful.
So far, all we know about the cast is that it includes Ben Barnes (Shadow and Bone) as Jamieson and Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds) as the villainous Mrs. Sigsby, according to Deadline. The show has Benjamin Cavell on board as writer and executive producer. Cavell helmed 2020’s The Stand miniseries remake, which… well, it happened. Again, we’re staying hopeful here. Production starts later this year in Nova Scotia.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/one-of-stephen-kings-best-recent-novels-is-being-made-into-a-show-for-mgm-203220393.html?src=rss
The following contains spoilers for “The Legend of Ruby Sunday.”
In an episode full of misdirection, the biggest one has to be its title, given we’ve learned very little about what Ruby Sunday’s legend actually is. Instead, the first part of the series’ two part finale is essentially an hour to build a sense of dread that spills over in its final moments. I could cheat and say “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” is just “Army of Ghosts” — the first half of the 2006 season’s finale — with a bigger budget. Except the big bad that reveals itself at the end is a villain from a far deeper cut than the usual corners of Doctor Who’s history.
The Doctor and Ruby arrive at UNIT HQ to ask about the mysterious woman — Susan Twist — following them around the universe. UNIT, meanwhile, has been monitoring someone named Susan Triad, a British tech billionaire who will announce her gift to humanity later that day. Even the goofballs at UNIT work out that S.TRIAD is an anagram of TARDIS and the Doctor thinks Triad, or the mysterious woman more generally, could be his granddaughter.
But there’s also the matter of Ruby’s parentage to uncover, giving the Doctor a reason not to just confront Triad. The Doctor, Ruby and a UNIT soldier enter the time window — a low-grade holodeck — to try and see who left Ruby on the steps of the church. But the history’s a bit wonky, and Ruby’s faceless mother — unlike what we saw in “The Church on Ruby Road” — turns and ominously points toward the TARDIS. Not long after, the TARDIS is engulfed in a black cloud of swirling evil that nobody’s sure what to do about.
The Doctor then meets Triad just before she gets on stage, prompting her to remember all of her other selves. Whenever Triad dreams, she’s somehow aware of those myriad alternate selves. And while she takes to the stage, the Doctor asks the team at UNIT HQ to scan the TARDIS. It is similarly engulfed in an invisible cloud of malevolent stuff that’s threatening everyone in the area.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
[ASIDE: This is the second time in four years that Doctor Who has tried to parody an Apple Keynote. And this is the second time that they’ve totally misunderstood how to stage one that looks even remotely evocative of what they’re parodying. I know the conventions of the tech keynote have mutated since the Steve Jobs era, but they’re not even trying.]
A UNIT staffer, Harriet Arbinger (Wait… H. Arbinger?) starts muttering about a dark prophecy while Triad goes off script. The Doctor, standing close by, watches as she turns into a skeleton monster while the TARDIS is menaced by a giant animal head surrounded by Egyptian iconography. Turns out Susan isn’t the Doctor’s granddaughter, or even a key component of the story, but an innocent. An innocent who has been co-opted by Sutekh, an all-powerful Egyptian God we first saw in 1975’s “Pyramids of Mars.” Cue the credits.
It’s a slender synopsis, mostly because these scenes are played slowly as the tension ratchets up. “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” takes its time, letting the screw turn gently until you’re almost happy when the big reveal happens. It’s a gripping ride on a first watch, although I imagine it’ll not have too much value when you go back to it a third or fourth time. But, then again, that’s often been an issue with episodes penned by Russell T. Davies. It’s also a good way to juice bookings for next week’s finale which will get a UK cinema release on June 21.
Was it easy to guess that we’d be getting Sutekh back after his one outing in “Pyramids of Mars?” The rumor mill certainly pulled in that direction over the last month or so, and it’s not as if we didn’t get a clue or two along the way. Longtime Davies fans will recall that Vince watches the part one cliffhanger at the end of the first episode of Queer as Folk. And we’ve already had a whole scene from “Pyramids of Mars” lifted — the jump into a ruined future — in “The Devil’s Chord.”
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
If you are unfamiliar, “Pyramids of Mars” is a classic, and another blockbuster from the pen of the series’ best 20th century writer, Robert Holmes. At the time, Holmes was the series’ script editor and had commissioned a story from writer Lewis Griefer. But Griefer’s material was so poor that Holmes and producer Philip Hinchcliffe decided a replacement was needed. So Holmes was tasked with writing a whole new episode in a tiny amount of time. The finished episode was credited to pseudonym Stephen Harris, but it’s all Holmes under the hood. Sadly, because of various rules around writing credits, “The Legend of Ruby Sunday” end credits actually give credit to Lewis Griefer as Sutekh’s creator and omit Holmes, which feels pretty rough.
But that one minor injustice aside, let’s bring on the finale.
Susan Twist Corner
Well, looks as if we have our answer that Susan Twist was something of a misdirect.
Gabriel Woolf, who voiced Sutekh in 1975, is back to give voice to him now.
When Mrs. Flood was left to look after Cherry, she was clearly aware of Sutekh’s return and seemed delighted by it. But she didn’t appear to be a harbinger, so it’s likely she’s representing another, different malevolent character from the series' past.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doctor-who-the-legend-of-ruby-sunday-review-what-legend-120004162.html?src=rss
PlayStation Productions and Screen Gems have announced the cast for the upcoming movie adaptation of the interactive horror game Until Dawn. According to Deadline, the ensemble will include Ella Rubin, who stars alongside Anne Hathaway in Amazon Prime's The Idea of You, and Michael Cimino, who played Victor Salazar in Hulu's Love, Victor.Expats' Ji-young Yoo and Sitting in Bars with Cake's Odessa A'zion have also signed on to play characters in the game revolving around eight young adults who have to survive the night at a remote mountain lodge while being hunted by a killer.
Supermassive Games got some pretty well-known actors to provide motion capture and voice acting for the game's characters, including Rami Malek and Hayden Panettiere. They're no longer the right age to play their original roles, so it doesn't come as a surprise that they're not involved in the project. But since they're not unknown motion capture actors, the filmmakers are dealing with a unique situation in that famous people's faces are tied to the characters other people will now portray.
"At PlayStation Productions, we are always looking to find creative and authentic ways to adapt our beloved games that our fans will enjoy," Asad Qizilbash, head of Sony's production company, told Deadline. "Alongside Screen Gems, we’ve assembled a fantastic cast of new characters that builds upon our already stellar filmmaking team and their vision for the adaptation."
The game itself is getting a remake for the PS5 and for PC. It was built in Unreal Engine 5 for the newer console, and it will add a third-person camera mode, new locations and new interactions to the original. Until Dawn's remake is coming out sometime this fall.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/until-dawns-original-actors-will-not-star-in-its-film-adaptation-110036254.html?src=rss
If you regularly stare at the Steam charts to see if there’s anything new and exciting to play, you may have noticed an odd little “game” called Banana. It has quickly become a huge success and, as of this writing, sits at the number three spot with over 400,000 concurrent players. It’s a simple idle clicker game, like many before it, so what’s making players flock to what amounts to a static screen of a huge banana?
The promise of sweet, sweet cash, that’s what. It’s an extremely bare-bones title that has you repeatedly clicking on a banana. That’s pretty much it, though there’s a twist. As you click and click on the tropical fruit, there’s a chance of a banana sticker dropping into your Steam inventory. These bananas come in all different designs, from silver-encrusted variants to one that looks like it's glitching out from a hack.
aaladin66, Pony, Sky, AestheticSpartan
Because the bananas show up in your inventory, they can be sold on the Steam Marketplace. Rare bananas have already gone for as much as $1,400, though the average payout is somewhere in the $0.02 range. One of the developers called it a “legal infinite money glitch” in an interview with Polygon. “Users make money out of a free game while selling free virtual items,” he continued.
The money earned goes into a Steam wallet, which can then be used to purchase games. So these bananas are basically NFTs, only without the blockchain. People are buying and selling them like crazy, like weird fruit-based trading cards. Forget the banana stand: it looks like there’s money in just the facsimile of a banana.
If the idea of spending all day clicking on a fake banana in front of a vomit-green background doesn’t do it for you, the developers sell inventory bananas outright for $0.25 a pop. The game itself, however, is free to play. The devs deny allegations that the clicker is some sort of scam or a Ponzi scheme, simply saying that it’s “pretty much a stupid game.” Idle clickers, after all, are nothing new.
As for the future, the designers have teased updates, including a way to use inventory items to change the way the plain in-game banana looks. There also might be a minigame coming down the pike, as well a shop upgrade that lets players exchange multiples of the same banana for a unique drop. One thing is a near certainty. The massive popularity of Banana is sure to inspire a whole bunch of copycats. May I humbly suggest a pizza slice as something to click over and over.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/one-of-the-biggest-games-on-steam-right-now-is-a-clickable-banana-190058749.html?src=rss
Neva is going to make me cry. It very nearly did at Summer Game Fest, as the game’s introductory cinematics faded to black, literally just one minute into my time with the demo. I won’t divulge what happens in those initial frames, but it shattered my soul. It also perfectly primed me for the heart-pounding danger and devastating beauty that I would get lost in for the next 45 minutes, alongside my new best friend, Neva the wolf.
Nomada Studio
Every aspect of Neva is breathtaking. It plays like a living watercolor illustration: Alba, the protagonist, has long, slender limbs, a cloud of silver hair and a flowing red cloak that drapes behind her elegantly with each leap and fall. Neva is a young white wolf, fluffy and energetic, and the two share an intense bond that’s repeatedly reinforced and tested in the demo.
The world of Neva feels slightly more grounded than that of Gris, the game that put Nomada Studio on the map in 2018, but it’s still filled with layers of magic. The landscapes beyond the 2D plane that Alba and Neva traverse have incredible depth — dense forests hiding secrets and mountain ranges towering above wide valleys, sharp peaks piercing the sky in the far distance. The demo has lush glades draped in vines and weeping branches, sunlight streaming through the gaps in the leaves, as well as cave systems with dark, tight corridors. At times Neva takes the Frank Lloyd Wright approach to design, squeezing players through claustrophobic thickets that suddenly burst onto fields of thick green grass, the camera pulling back to show how small Alba and Neva really are in this space.
Nomada Studio
Trees, leaves, rocks and roots compose the game’s sidescrolling playground, with sloping platforms and floating islands built mainly out of stone. Touches of fantastical alien technology appear with increasing frequency as the demo progresses, as do hordes of inky-black enemies with round white faces, mouths open in silent screams.
Platforming in Neva is intuitive. There’s minimal on-screen text in the game, and instead direction comes from the environment, soft highlights and sunkissed glows marking the proper paths in a way that feels completely natural. I flowed through most areas of the demo, leaping onto ledges with almost-subconscious impulses, knowing that I could trust the game’s subtle instructions. There are areas of spiky blackness that Alba has to clear for Neva to be able to progress, and at times it’s necessary to leave the little wolf behind for a moment, generating instant separation anxiety. Neva yelps and squeaks as she learns how to traverse the world, and they’re heart-wrenching sounds. I was keenly aware of Neva with each jump, making sure she could follow my path, lingering to watch her complete big leaps, petting her after each success, and consistently calling out her name.
Alba’s voice is fairy-like and the way she says, “Neva? Neva. Nevaaa!” has become an earworm I can’t shake. In the days since coming home from Summer Game Fest and reuniting with my two small dogs, I’ve been walking around the house saying, “Neva?” as if it were their names. It’s been a very confusing time for them, but they’ve gotten a few extra treats, so all’s well.
Combat in Neva feels as intuitive as platforming, with simple inputs that land satisfying hits of Alba’s sword. The enemies, long-limbed creatures that appear out of dark pools in the ground, slash at Alba with their spiky fingers and throw lethal blobs at her, but one-on-one, they’re fairly easy to dispatch. Alba is able to get incredibly close to each creature before she takes damage, and this generous proximity makes the fight scenes feel like dance, with constant action and minimal interruptions. I didn’t die until I reached the boss fight at the end of the demo, where Neva and I had to fight off a giant creature, double jumping around it to slash at its legs and back, avoiding its attacks. I defeated the boss after three deaths, and the scene felt like an appropriate escalation of everything I’d learned so far.
Nomada Studio
I’m convinced that every preview of Neva (including this one) will mention how quickly and easily the game will make players cry, and I want to take a moment to recognize the magnitude of this achievement. The bond that Nomada Studio have built between Neva and Alba is incredibly powerful, and this type of emotional connection doesn’t just happen when you put an animal and a human in the same scene. Neva is a constant source of anxiety and joy: The cub must be protected, at all costs, and she feels like a physical part of Alba’s being, necessary to the protagonist’s survival. Neva establishes their shared trauma and every following mechanic reinforces their partnership — protect, pet, repeat. Neva and Alba need each other, and their shared love resonates from each frame of the game.
Guaranteed, Neva is going to make me cry.
Neva is due out on PC and PlayStation 5 this year, developed by Nomada Studio and published by Devolver Digital.
Catch up on all of the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/neva-hands-on-a-grand-achievement-in-emotional-game-design-180516649.html?src=rss
Getty has partnered up with Picsart, a popular photo-editing platform, to build an AI image generator that’s entirely trained on licensed stock images. The companies are calling it a “responsible, commercially-safe” alternative to current platforms. Images created by the model will have full commercial rights, which should address concerns about AI-generated images violating copyright laws.
The service will only be available to paid Picsart subscribers and the whole thing recalls Adobe’s Firefly AI model. That generator is also trained on stock images, though not exclusively. Adobe recently outraged users by updating its terms of service to indicate that it could access and use people’s work to train AI models. The company quickly amended the terms of service once the backlash started spreading.
Picsart and Getty hope to avoid any backlash by sticking to fully licensed stock images, so regular Picsart users won’t be at risk of having their creations snatched up by the model for training and generation purposes. “It allows creators to bring their visions to life while maintaining the highest standards of commercial safety,” Grant Farhall, CPO at Getty Images, wrote in a blog post.
It also looks like Getty is playing fair with this one, for those worrying about the work of professional photographers being co-opted. We reached out to the company and a rep said that it is "compensating creators included in the dataset on an annual basis." That's something at least!
The Picsart x Getty Images model releases later this year, though there’s no concrete launch date. It’ll be accessible via Picsart’s API services.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/picsart-and-getty-are-making-an-ai-image-generator-entirely-trained-on-licensed-content-154058696.html?src=rss