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.
While all of the attention right now is on the upcoming remake of Ocarina of Time, Nintendo announced that it’s going to stream an indie-focused showcase tomorrow. It’ll be around 15 minutes long and air starting at 10AM ET.
Service for both the mobile and Nintendo Switch versions of the free-to-play Pokémon-themed MOBA will end on March 23rd, 2027, just after the previously announced Aeos Crown 2027 Tokyo competitive tournament is scheduled to conclude. New memberships are no longer being accepted starting today.
[Pokémon UNITE]
Wintory, the composer for Journey, some songs in Hades II, and many other games, shared tracks he had recorded with a full orchestra as part of “conversations” to potentially be part of the now-canceled next game in the Mass Effect franchise.
After hearing this music and seeing the game’s leaked trailer, I think I’ll always wonder what could have been.
Variety published a memo from CEO David Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz about the changes. The leaders have already indicated there will be layoffs. The Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery merger was completed earlier this month.
The Ghost of Yōtei developer is laying off 24 people, Aftermath reports.
Update: Aftermath now says 24 staffers, not 26, were let go.
Sega recently pulled the recently-launched Complete Edition of the game, which was made in part by an external developer, after users found bugs and upscaling seemingly done by AI.
“At Creative Assembly we do not use generative AI to create game assets, including AI-generated art,” Creative Assembly’s VP of Total War Roger Collum, said in a big post on Reddit. “We demand the same of any external developers we work with.”
Alongside laying off 1,000 employees, Netflix has fired the heads of its film and content divisions this month. We’ve already explained the company can’t fire its way out of a slump that’s now hitting its engagement metrics, but Bloomberg recounts just why co-CEO Ted Sarandos thinks otherwise, and how he got here in the first place.
It was supposed to be a “full-length movie,” but whatever — Elon Musk’s version of Homer’s epic poem has now arrived to take on Christopher Nolan. Just ignore the inconsistency of the character’s faces, historically inaccurate armor, non-functional shield wall, etc…
Walker’s 2006 album is unsettling, bizarre, and the perfect way to kill a party.
Let’s travel back to when memes were new, anyone could get their 15 minutes with a silly dance, and the amount of data tech companies collected about you was slightly less creepy. Mozilla reunited some of the biggest names in late ‘aughts memedom for its “come back to Firefox” campaign.
Some Kind of Animal, the latest record from Fielded, jumps from slinky R&B, to neo-soul, to industrial funk.
How the stop-motion animation studio blends traditional techniques with modern tech.
Xbox CEO Asha Sharma and team countered by asking for $800 million, and Netflix has pulled its offer, Puck reports in an article discussing the new leadership at Netflix.
Xbox launched an “XP” division this month that will work on adaptations of its games, and Xbox is already working with Netflix on a Diablo animated series.
Amazon announced that its Fallout-themed reality show — which throws contestants into a Vault-Tec bunker — will start streaming on January 13th. It’s something of a spiritual sequel to the Squid Game competition on Netflix.
I took a foldable phone to New York City’s first ever microdrama film festival to see if the entertainment industry’s investment in vertical video will clash with the wider aspect ratio screens of the iPhone Duo and Galaxy Z Fold 8.
A rise in AI-powered decomps, recomps, and ports has thrust the community into chaos.
Nintendo Switch Sports Resort (thumb wrestling), and Final Fantasy Resonance (random battles to mash through) are both out today. They’re great, and they should help you stay busy ahead of the Ocarina of Time remake and GTA VI next month.
Laika CEO Travis Knight explains why he remains hopeful despite the potential for AI to be ‘devastating.’
The list of sites that had to go down, at least temporarily, because of the recently disclosed PHP vulnerability keeps growing. Thankfully, the Internet Archive’s ops team quickly got things patched, secured, and back online. Digital librarian Brewster Kahle posted his thanks on Mastodon last night: “Given the severity, there are heroes in many many orgs from last night. Could have been no lights, no traffic signals, real problems.“
It was pretty obvious from the show’s finale, but now it’s official: Mike Flanagan is making a second season of his Carrie remake on Prime Video. “From the beginning, we imagined a story that goes far beyond the prom, and I’m incredibly grateful for Stephen [King]’s trust and support in exploring what comes next,” Flanagan said in a statement.
Lego and Daft Punk have revealed a new collaboration that will include an upcoming set based on the pyramid stage design from the duo’s 2007 Alive concert tour. The Daft Punk Concert set was originally submitted to the Lego Ideas platform in 2020 by a father-son duo from Belgium, according to Variety, but has finally been approved for production by Lego after amassing 10,000 supporters.
The keys were always the worst part of the MPK lineup, so the “upgraded keybed” is good news, even though it’s clearing a pretty low bar. But Akai’s pads remain the best in the biz, and the second-gen MPK Mini Plus adds polyphonic aftertouch. Plus, it’s got a full-color display and more hands-on controls than the original.
The breach was discovered on October 19th. That’s a lot of exposed Capcom ID email addresses, but thankfully the hackers didn’t leak much else: 196 passwords were changed (but no existing passwords were leaked), and 43 cases involved date of birth, gender, country, and nicknames being revealed.
Even though Mass Effect developer BioWare has been shut down, IGN reports that Amazon is still working on the Prime Video series, citing “sources inside Prime Video.”
I asked both EA and Amazon about the status of the show today, and both companies declined to comment.
At Alza, the entertainment industry is trying to reinvent itself.
Adam Savage shared a captivating half hour video of him exploring many of the detailed stop-motion puppets Laika Studios created for its new animated film, Wildwood. The studio’s animators already revealed that their puppets now have internal diaphragm’s making them appear to breath, but several of the puppets also have hidden mechanisms in their arms making biceps automatically flex as they’re moved.
