In reality, however, Free Guy is a movie about references. While many of those references are little more than brief nods to popular video games (GTA Online is the most obvious target, though Free Guy finds time to pay homage to Fortnite, Halo, and more), even the film’s basic structure feels like a compilation of various concepts that we’ve seen before. Honestly, one of the best ways to properly describe the movie is to take a page out of its playbook and use references....

This has been met with a positive, if cautious, reception after Game of Thrones’ controversial finale, but it also has made some Martin fans even more anxious since eight years after the publication of A Dance with Dragons, we’re still waiting for the sixth book in “A Song of Ice and Fire,” The Winds of Winter. Martin, however, attempted to quell those concerns when he took to his adorably antiquated blog to confirm he will not do any actual writing on House of the Dragon until The Winds of Winter is completed....

Funnily enough, this year’s Groundhog Day also indulged another increasingly frequent tradition. For, just like Punxsutawney Phil, beloved Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin emerged from his den to let us know if Winter was on the way…The Winds of Winter that is. Martin took to his charmingly outdated Livejournal blog, fittingly titled “Not a Blog”, to give an update on The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series....

You should be able to easily create and manage your server powered by Google Cloud in a matter of minutes. And, installing WordPress and setting up a site should also be a few clicks away. But is it that easy? Why should you choose Cloudways to host a WordPress site? Should you prefer the Google Cloud Platform for WordPress hosting? And, how can you do it? In this article, we try to answer all the above questions to help you decide before choosing a host for your WordPress website....

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a famous director who doesn’t have a few old screenplays collecting dust in a filing drawer somewhere. Even legendary director Stanley Kubrick still has a Napoleon movie waiting to be made. And let’s not forget Alejandro Jodorowsky’s work on Dune, which could very well be the greatest science fiction movie that never made it past the page. If you love reading about these unseen gems, a new thread on Twitter has other fan-favorite directors chiming in with their own thoughts on the scripts they’ve written that have never been made....

Halo Episode 4 For a show based on a science fiction shooter game, the Halo TV series offers more intrigue than action. Whether that’s a matter of budget or choice, episode 4 is rich with weighty conversations and sorely lacking in alien combat. Even the titular Halo ring is still just a barely understood goal to be chased. The most alien vista in “Homecoming” is more Dune than Halo. Still, we’re back to the family relationships I praised in episode 2, with the episode trading action for some more solidification of the way Halsey messes up all the people in her orbit....

So why did it seem like Thomas Harris, the reclusive author who created Dr. Lecter and wrote the novels, tried his best to kill off the public interest in Hannibal–if not Hannibal himself–at the height of the character’s fame? Because that appears to be almost exactly what Harris attempted to do with Hannibal, the third book featuring the erudite monster, which was published in 1999. Less than two years later, the film version arrived in theaters (20 years ago this week, in fact) and received just as polarizing a response as Harris’ book....

There are a number of reasons as to why Hasbro is such a powerhouse in the world of toys, but ultimately the main factor behind why their products are so beloved is simple—they are fun. Since its original formation in 1923, the Rhode Island-based company has dedicated itself to releasing toys that are rich with creative potential and stand the test of time. Along with beloved original creations, Hasbro is also home to some of the industry’s best licensed products, including Star Wars, Transformers, Marvel, and Power Rangers....

For starters, Tenet finally makes its long-awaited HBO Max this month. Mark your calendars as May 1 is the day that you can finally watch Christopher Nolan’s latest cerebral thriller. Of course, Tenet already had its theatrical release, but obviously that was not really an option for many of us. In addition to Tenet, Wonder Woman 1984 makes its triumphant return to HBO Max this month on May 13. The Wonder Woman sequel already premiered on HBO Max this past December, now it’s getting a second run on the streamer....

“I love Westeros, I love George’s world,” Condal said. “I would love to be involved with it, as long as he and HBO will have me. It’s hard to think about where things could go. The show is called House of the Dragon, it’s not called ‘The Dance of the Dragons.’ It’s about the Targaryen dynasty in all of its forms, it’s about the Targaryen house, really, and I think there’s many fascinating periods to be told there....

In the face of all that, the queer players and other characters in their orbit form deep bonds, supporting one another as they do their best to survive, understand themselves, and take back as much joy as they can, in a world that doesn’t provide for them. They find community with one another, with the local LGBTQ scene, and with other queers in the League. And because the show is populated with so many LGBTQ people, there’s no burden for any one character to represent the entire community....

However, for a new generation of speedrunners (gamers who compete to beat games as quickly as possible), this seemingly impossible act can sometimes happen in the most unusual ways. “The first blindfolded run I did for Pokémon Red/Blue was unplanned,” says Twitch streamer and video game speedrunner Shenanagans. “Another speedrunner and I just jumped into the game blindfolded without any practice/testing… We were both able to finish the run in around 45 minutes....

By its very definition, the work of H.P. Lovecraft is often challenging to adapt properly. The massively influential early 20th century sci-fi and horror author reveled in depicting the indescribable. The terrors of Lovecraft’s “Cthulhu Mythos” are so profound that his characters are often incapable of even perceiving them without going mad. How, exactly, is any visual medium supposed to go about crafting the unseeable? According to “Dreams in the Witch House” director Catherine Hardwicke, you opt to ensnare one of the other human senses instead....

That compliment, dubiously delivered on Saturday Night Live’s 1981 Halloween episode by a thematically-apropriate host in Halloween star Donald Pleasance, served as the introduction for the show’s most unique musical act: SoCal hardcore punk rock band Fear. However, differing from other “controversial” moments in the show’s history, Fear’s appearance remains notorious not for the content of their music—rough around the edges as it was—but for the wanton destruction it left onstage, and an abrupt admonishment of the show’s sacred metropolitan setting....

As Jessica Henwick rides momentum from a performance in The Matrix Resurrections as blue-haired plot-catalyst character Bugs, one would think that her 2018-wrapped role as the sword-swinging cage-fighting Netflix Marvel character, Colleen Wing, is far back in her rearview mirror. However, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in the midst of a shakeup on that front, as box office smash Spider-Man: No Way Home and Disney+ TV series Hawkeye demonstrated to resounding enthusiasm....

We talk a lot about how the line between what constitutes a TV show and what constitutes a movie has become increasingly blurred in this era of fractured entertainment and diverse distribution models. While the last decade has seen TV shows incorporating more cinematic elements into their production structure, the traditional TV showrunner model has mostly stayed fixed, representing a major difference in how TV is made versus how film is made....

That’s how Affleck sounded in his new career profile for Entertainment Weekly, in which his longtime pal and occasional writing partner, Matt Damon, was the interviewer. The two touched upon Affleck’s unhappiness with doing blockbusters around the time Justice League went into production, as well as his choice to step away from that kind of moviemaking shortly afterward despite the fact Affleck was slated to co-write, direct, and star in his own Batman movie....

Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Episode 3 If you’ve never seen Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, it’s maybe hard to imagine it even existing. Unlike many other famous science fiction films, what makes The Voyage Home so absurdly good is that it’s equal parts ridiculous and brilliant. It makes a statement about conservation and ecology but also has a very silly chase scene in which Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy break Chekov out of a hospital....

So as Black Widow moves from May 2020 to November, then Eternals moves from November to February 2021 and so on (all the details are at the link above). But there is one outlier in all this: the third Spider-Man adventure starring Tom Holland as the young webslinger. Spider-Man 3 (as it’s being called for now) was scheduled to begin filming this July in Atlanta to meet a July 16, 2021 opening — right between the original release dates for Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness (May 2021) and Thor: Love and Thunder (November 2021)....

In the wake of Cyberpunk 2077‘s massive launch, Den of Geek spoke with the trio of composers behind the game’s score: Marcin Przybylowicz (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), P.T. Adamczyk (Gwent: The Witcher Card Game), and Paul Leonard-Morgan (Dredd). The three composers discussed the soundtrack’s conception and revealed the unconventional methods they used to create the score’s unique, ominous sound. The Cyberpunk 2077 Original Score, which contains two discs-worth of the game’s enormous pool of music, is available now to buy and stream....