Author: dpugh007

With Westworld Season 2 less than two weeks from its premiere, showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan took to Reddit last night [April 9] to discuss the best way to deal with the inevitable spoilers that will emerge as the show continues and fans attempt to guess its twists and turns. Their radical suggestion was to release a video that detailed the entire plot from beginning to end, so that “the members of the community who want the season spoiled for them can watch ahead, and then protect the rest of the community, and help to distinguish between what’s ‘theory’ and what’s spoiler.”

Joy and Nolan promised delivery of this video if their post got more than 1,000 upvotes. Inevitably it far exceeded that number (2,950 and counting), so they uploaded the 25-minute video. While it starts like it might be detailing the entire plot of Westworld Season 2, around 90 seconds in, it becomes something…. very different. Don’t worry, there aren’t actually any spoliers in the video, so you’re free to check out the amazing moment below. Check it out below:

Earlier this week, Nolan spoke more about one of the new season’s most anticipated additions–Shogun World. This samurai-themed park was first teased in the final episode of Season 1, and Nolan confirmed that “a couple of episodes that are spent in Shogun World.”

Nolan explained that main draw to creating this new park was his love of Japanese cinema, in particular the classic samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa. “It comes down to being obsessed with Japanese cinema as a kid and earnestly wanting to make an homage to Kurosawa and the other films I grew up watching,” he said. “My older brothers and I watched Sergio Leone westerns and Kurosawa’s classic samurai films and were fascinated to discover they had the same plot.

“You had this wonderful call and response between these two genres–with the gunslinger and the ronin. They have identical tropes but are set within different cultures. Frankly, this was just a great excuse to go and make a samurai movie with all the trimmings.”

As well as Shogun World, the promotional Delos Experience site also revealed that there are a further four parks which are currently “closed to the public.” There has been much speculation about what these other worlds could be. The 1976 sequel to original 1973 movie Westworld was titled Futureworld, and it featured a number of different parks, including Medieval World, Roman World, and, er, Spa World.

Westworld Season 2 premiers on HBO on April 22. For more, check out GameSpot’s recap of everything you need to know about Season 1 before starting the new season.

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Like last year’s Get Out, the huge success of A Quiet Place this weekend has proved that modestly budgeted original horror movies can become box office juggernauts. The Jon Krasinski-directed film has had the second biggest opening weekend of 2018 so far, making more than Pacific Rim: Uprising or Ready Player One in its first three days (but less than Black Panther). Now the movie’s writers have revealed that at one stage it was being considered to become part of the JJ Abrams-produced Cloverfield series.

In an interview with Slashfilm, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods explained that since both A Quiet Place and the Cloverfield movies were developed at Paramount, there were discussions about rewriting A Quiet Place to form part of that loose sci-fi series. “It crossed our mind and we had spoken to our representatives about that possibility,” Beck said. “It was weird timing, though, because when we were writing the script, 10 Cloverfield Lane was at Paramount. We were actually talking to an executive there about this film, and it felt from pitch form that there might be crossover. But when we finally took the final script in to Paramount, they saw it as a totally different movie.”

Both 2016’s 10 Cloverfield Lane and this year’s The Cloverfield Paradox were initially shot as standalone movies, before being retitled and reshot to link them to the original 2008 movie Cloverfield. The fourth Cloverfield movie has reportedly been shot too. In January it was revealed that it was a World War II movie and had the working title Overlord, although no further details have been revealed to date.

In the Slashfilm interview, Woods went on to explain why it was important for original stories like A Quiet Place to be produced. “As filmgoers, we crave new and original ideas, and we feel like so much of what’s out there is IP,” he said. “It’s comic books, it’s remakes, it’s sequels. We show up to all of them, we enjoy those movies too, but our dream was always to drop something different into the marketplace, so we feel grateful that Paramount embraced the movie as its own thing.”

As well as the huge box office results, A Quiet Place has received some of the year’s best reviews too. In our A Quiet Place review, Tony Wilson said the movie “does its job well. It clearly establishes ground rules, continually ups the danger, and makes dynamic use of all types of sound. While it certainly doesn’t shy away from trying to make you jump, it’s the sonic nature of the scares and unending threat of everyday actions that make this film stand tall.”

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There has been much excitement amongst fans of HBO’s acclaimed sci-fi drama Westworld about the existence of Shogun World. The samurai-themed park was first teased in the final episode of Season 1, and last week, the viral promotional site the Delos Experience dropped some major hints about its role in the upcoming Season 2. Now joint-showrunner Jonathan Nolan has spoken about Shogun World.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Nolan explained that there were two major reasons to introduce the park into Westworld Season 2, the first being geographical. “If you’re doing a theme park, you wouldn’t limit it to the Western European or North American experience,” he said. “You’d try to reach a global audience. So the idea is you have a texture here that’s totally different.”

Nolan went on to explain that main draw was in fact his love Japanese cinema, in particular the classic samurai movies of Akira Kurosawa, and the way they were sometimes remade in the US as westerns. “It comes down to being obsessed with Japanese cinema as a kid and earnestly wanting to make an homage to Kurosawa and the other films I grew up watching,” he said. “My older brothers and I watched Sergio Leone westerns and Kurosawa’s classic samurai films and were fascinated to discover they had the same plot.

“You had this wonderful call and response between these two genres–with the gunslinger and the ronin. They have identical tropes but are set within different cultures. Frankly, this was just a great excuse to go and make a samurai movie with all the trimmings.”

However, Nolan was also quick to temper expectations about how much of Shogun World fans will see in Westworld Season 2. “Most of our season is spent in Westworld,” he confirmed. “But we do get a chance to glimpse some of the other worlds. And we have a couple of episodes that are spent in Shogun World with one of our storylines, while our other storylines continue elsewhere. So I say we’re trying to temper expectations, except to say that I think the stuff we did for Shogun World is spectacular.”

As well as Shogun World, the Delos Experience site also revealed that there are a further four parks which are currently “closed to the public.” There has been much speculation about what these other worlds could be. The 1976 sequel to original 1973 movie Westworld was titled Futureworld, and it featured a number of different parks, including Medieval World, Roman World, and, er, Spa World.

Westworld Season 2 premiers on HBO on April 22. Check out the latest trailer here, plus this Easter Egg-filled poster.

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The classic ’60s sci-fi series Lost in Space returns to screens this month, in the shape of Netflix’s lavish reboot. The show hits the streaming service in its entirety on Friday, April 13, and a new trailer has now been released.

This one focuses on the character of Dr Smith, the ship’s morally ambiguous psychologist. The character was played in the original show by Jonathan Harris and Gary Oldman in the 1998 movie remake, but in this new version the role is taken on by Parker Posey (Superman Returns, Search Party). Check the trailer out below:

While the earlier series and movie of Lost in Space were more comedic, this new version looks a lot darker and more dramatic. However, the plot remains the same–the Robinson family find themselves stranded on an alien planet after a colonisation mission goes wrong. The cast also includes Molly Parker (House of Cards), Toby Stephens (Black Sails, Die Another Day), and Maxwell Jenkins (Sense 8), with Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall producing and helming several episodes. Watch the previous trailer here.

In related news, Marshall is also directing the much-anticipated remake of Hellboy. The movie stars Stranger Things‘ David Harbour in the lead role, with American Gods star Ian McShane as Hellboy’s adoptive father Professor Broom and Resident Evil‘s Milla Jovovich as the villain Nimue the Blood Queen. The first image of Harbour as Hellboy was released last September, and the movie hits theaters on January 11, 2019.

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The classic ’60s sci-fi series Lost in Space returns to screens this month, in the shape of Netflix’s lavish reboot. The show hits the streaming service in its entirety on Friday, April 13, and a new trailer has now been released.

This one focuses on the character of Dr Smith, the ship’s morally ambiguous psychologist. The character was played in the original show by Jonathan Harris and Gary Oldman in the 1998 movie remake, but in this new version the role is taken on by Parker Posey (Superman Returns, Search Party). Check the trailer out below:

While the earlier series and movie of Lost in Space were more comedic, this new version looks a lot darker and more dramatic. However, the plot remains the same–the Robinson family find themselves stranded on an alien planet after a colonisation mission goes wrong. The cast also includes Molly Parker (House of Cards), Toby Stephens (Black Sails, Die Another Day), and Maxwell Jenkins (Sense 8), with Game of Thrones director Neil Marshall producing and helming several episodes. Watch the previous trailer here.

In related news, Marshall is also directing the much-anticipated remake of Hellboy. The movie stars Stranger Things‘ David Harbour in the lead role, with American Gods star Ian McShane as Hellboy’s adoptive father Professor Broom and Resident Evil‘s Milla Jovovich as the villain Nimue the Blood Queen. The first image of Harbour as Hellboy was released last September, and the movie hits theaters on January 11, 2019.

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With no significant new releases over the past seven days, the UK sales charts tell a familiar story for the week ending April 7. Far Cry 5 retains top spot, according to sales monitor GfK Chart-Track, while FIFA 18 (No.2) and Sea of Thieves (No.3) round off a top three that looks exactly the same as it did last week.

Outside the top three, Forza Motorsport 7 rises five places to No.4 and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds maintains its No.5 position to give Xbox One three console exclusives in the top five. It was recently announced that PUBG’s Xbox One version will receive the Miramar map soon, so players there have something to look forward to in the near future.

A price promotion on Star War Battlefront II sees EA and DICE’s sci-fi shooter re-enter the chart at No.16. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, meanwhile, rises two places to No.10 in the same week his fellow original PlayStation mascot, Spyro, had a similar remaster trilogy announced.

Far Cry 5 has enjoyed huge success since its March launch: it is the fastest-selling game in the series and Ubisoft’s second-biggest launch ever. It was also popular with critics, earning a 9/10 in GameSpot’s Far Cry 5 review. For more on the open-world game, check out Far Cry 5’s 11 most fascinating easter eggs and secrets.

You can read the full top 10 sales chart below, courtesy of UKIE and GfK Chart-Track. Note this table does not include digital sales data, and so should not be considered representative of all UK game sales.

1. Far Cry 5
2. FIFA 18
3. Sea of Thieves
4. Forza Motorsport 7
5. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
6. Call of Duty: WWII
7. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
8. Grand Theft Auto V
9. Super Mario Odyssey
10. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

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