Tag: Entertainment – Variety

It would be nice to say that Connor Storrie burns up the screen in “April X,” the star’s first film vehicle released since TV’s “Heated Rivalry” made him hot property, but it would be overstating the case. Appropriating Harrison Ford’s “Blade Runner” frown, among a few other things nicked from that sci-fi classic in this sci-fi filler, Storrie capably shoulders a grim, po-faced tale of human cloning and trafficking in a greige dystopian future, but there’s not much for him to work with here — and he mostly projects the aura of a working actor dutifully waiting for something better to come along. Which it did, so job done. But you can hardly blame “April X” for riding his sudden celebrity, securing a theatrical release and escaping the straight-to-VOD morass that would appear to be its natural habitat.

Surely only Storrie’s most ardently committed new fans will venture out to see this, though: It’s hardly an embarrassing blot on his résumé, but it’ll be forgotten long before the second-season premiere of the queer hockey phenomenon. For writer-director Michel K. Parandi, making his feature-length debut, “April X” will be a more critical calling card — and duly shows off some resourceful technical ability on a cramped budget. But his script, co-written with regular collaborator Jack Coulter, is less impressive, welding together story scraps from other, better films to rather turbid, uninvolving effect. It occupies a similar genre space to the recent release “Hot Spot,” Agnieszka Smoczynska’s comparably scrappy, patched-together vision of compromised human identity in the middle-distance future; that film was a misfire, but a measure of its imaginative eccentricity would still be welcome here.

The year is unspecified, but the fatigued brutalist housing blocks of outer Bucharest are still standing: Though it doesn’t specify a location either, “April X” uses the present-day wear and tear of the Romanian capital, where the film was shot on location, as shorthand for a world collapsing into concrete ruin. The odd hi-tech drone adds some futuristic pizzazz to the film’s exterior vistas, but the new technologies defining the narrative aren’t of the gleaming, brave-new-world variety: People are being cloned in grubby, shadowed fashion, while memories and dreams can be captured and downloaded onto surprisingly retro-looking data devices.

In this grimy waking nightmare, twins Baxter (Storrie) and April (German actor Lilly Krug) barely eke out a living doing a variety of sketchy jobs, some more criminal than others. He traffics organs on the black market, while she has a special gift for dreaming: At a time, apparently, when nobody has slumber visions anymore, hers are enviably lucid and vivid, to a marketable degree. April’s selling of her dreams to others wishing to experience her sensations isn’t a fresh idea — paging “Strange Days” — but it’s one of the more fertile ones here, and goes frustratingly unexploited as the film continues to probe a single glum reality.

We’re more concerned with Baxter, whose underworld dealings eventually see him run afoul of local gangster Klein (Serban Pavlu), and the twins’ combined savings aren’t enough to allay the severe consequences. Soon April disappears, and Baxter’s desperate search for her begins. It’s ongoing when the story suddenly lurches five years into the future: The world looks much the same, but his hair is briefly longer, while April has seemingly been cloned into a number of identikit sex workers. Whether her brother can locate her soul in any one of them, or somehow implant it via her recorded memories, is the film’s big existential question — but the characters themselves aren’t drawn with enough warmth or personality for us to really care either way.

Storrie soldiers through it all with a clenched jaw and a steely gaze, but the film’s world never comes fully to life. Nathan Haugaard’s sheeny widescreen lensing and Oana Novicov’s distressed production design ensure it looks pretty good, but “April X” is missing the granular particulars and textures that might make us believe it: The narrative, likewise, is just cohesive enough, but the details of Baxter’s life and livelihood are so muddy that he doesn’t have our full attention. Parandi’s film winds up outlining a dystopia more dull than devastating — though perhaps that’s the future we should really be fearing.

SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major spoilers for “Digger,” in theaters now via Warner Bros.

When does a bad movie become a fascinating watch?

So often the kiss of death for a feature is boredom; that feeling you’ve seen the same story many times before, the actors are checked out, there’s no visual panache. That’s not the case with “Digger.” While it’s shaping up to be a box office disaster, the movie is anything but dull. Tom Cruise leads the cast in acting to the rafters, DP Emmanuel Lubezki keeps the camera moving and director Alejandro G. Iñárritu injects plenty of swagger in the proceedings.

Unfortunately, the film’s opening — an extended introduction to Cruise’s ambitious oilman Digger Rockwell — is so in-your-face that it sags under the weight. Cruise is in grotesque prosthetics, eager to show us as quickly as possible how uncouth Digger is: He eats from the same can of sardines as his beloved cat, his butt crack is seen in plain view of his maid, his comb-over wisps wildly.

It’s a clichéd character surrounded by other bobbling caricatures that enter and exit the rooms of his mansion, flailing wildly as Digger learns that his oil company might have inadvertently caused a climate-based global disaster. It’s shrill and tired, and despite the best intentions of the filmmakers to cause provocation around environmentalism, it’s about as subtle as Cruise turning to the camera and screaming, “DO YOU GET IT?!?” Ultimately, the poster’s promise of “a comedy of catastrophic proportions” seems more like a threat than a guarantee of “Dr. Strangelove”-esque genius.

But then, an interesting twist happens. No, “Digger” isn’t a musical, but rather reveals that everything we’ve seen so far is a group of actors rehearsing an ambitious play about Digger called “Fossil Fools.” We’re witnessing the tech rehearsal hours before the show is set to debut in front of an audience, and Cruise drops his broad southern accent, revealing himself as Curtis Markson, the star of the show who has difficulty finding the satirical rhythm.

It’s an engagingly meta turn, and shows much more of Cruise’s psyche than audiences might expect. During a teflon press tour hyping “Digger,” journalists weren’t able to conjure anything personal or interesting from him. But during a scene where Cruise argues with “Fossil Fools” director Hannah (Sophie Wilde) about satire versus real-world events, the artifice of Cruise’s fat suit and cowboy boots melts away, and the fire in his eyes that made iconic performances in films like “Magnolia” and “Eyes Wide Shut” blaze returns in flashes.

It also helps to contextualize Iñárritu’s vision of satire itself. Some reviews of “Digger” have knocked the very idea of satirical films in 2026. After all, how can anything feel larger-than-life in the Trump era? But given the put-on-a-show staging, the film’s structure adds further firepower to standout scenes like Digger holding court in the United Nations, tap-dancing around a global community ready to feed him to the wolves after he doubles down on his wrongdoing.

The showcase scene is emphasized by the fact that everything is underwritten by Digger’s real-life nephew Kenny (Jesse Plemons), who bought the rights to “Fossil Fools” and used his vast wealth to fund the production. His motivations are many, as he implies that he’s doing it out of a mix of penance, flagellation and tribute to his family name. But ultimately he’s a benefactor of the arts. The themes make it impossible to ignore the real-life soap opera currently happening at “Digger” studio Warner Bros., where new owner David Ellison swears he bought the company for all the right reasons.

“Digger” ends on a somber note, with the audience methodically putting on gas masks and emptying the gorgeous theater, stepping into the dystopian world that remains after Digger’s environmental disaster. Flooded streets, discarded cars and military police are all around, until the camera tilts to the sky and the soundtrack becomes overwhelmed with the natural noises of wild animals. It’s a chilling wrap, as well as a dour end to what appears to be the last Warner Bros. film ever released.

Not all of the elements tied to the twist work — Curtis’ search for his daughter’s missing flight during the tech rehearsal is curiously underbaked — but at least it teases a flurry of ideas instead of drowning in clumsy dialogue. At its best, it recalls Charlie Kaufman’s far superior 2008 film “Synecdoche, New York,” in which Philip Seymour Hoffman is a theater director who, in the pursuit of truth, creates a full-scale recreation of New York City in a warehouse in order to accurately reflect life. It, too, looks at the idea of understanding larger truths through a stage production, but is more clever and sincere.

Ultimately, even the decision to add another layer, becoming a story about art just as much as one about the climate crisis, doesn’t escalate “Digger” into must-see territory. But the cross section of cinephiles who will be compelled to catch it in theaters — Cruise completists, flop aficionados, rubberneckers who want to see the world burn — will have more to chew on than the artifice presented at the beginning.

Paramount TV media chair George Cheeks, whose domain has included all of CBS in addition to the Paramount cable networks, is said to be in line for an expanded oversight at the newly merged Paramount-Warner Bros. entity (which will be named “Skydance,” the company revealed Friday).

Skydance would not comment, but Cheeks has been seen as a strong lieutenant overseeing the TV properties under Paramount ever since Skydance took control of the company last August. Prior to that, Cheeks was one of the three co-CEOs of Paramount Global — and was the only one of that triumvirate to make the transition to the new company.

Speculation and rumors of how the structure on the TV network and studio side might play out have been heavy over the past few days, now that the question of how the streaming structure at the merged company has been settled (with HBO boss Casey Bloys on top and Paramount direct-to-consumer head Cindy Holland exiting).

Many of the questions in the more traditional Hollywood world of TV networks and studios — still a hefty revenue driver — have centered on what roles Skydance head David Ellison might have in mind for Warner Bros. TV Group and WBD U.S. Networks chairman/CEO Channing Dungey and Cheeks. Both execs are well-liked and respected, and both boast tremendous domains, consisting of both studios and networks.

One scenario making the rounds has Cheeks potentially overseeing all of the vast TV holdings of the combined company, but so far, there’s no firm confirmation and a final structure isn’t expected to be announced until next week.

All eyes will also be on what role Ellison picks for Dungey, whose tenure at Warner Bros. TV Group continues to be extremely successful. Under Dungey, the studio produces more than 80 original series for more than 20 platforms, including HBO, HBO Max and others, with series like “Ted Lasso,” “Abbott Elementary”, “The Bachelor” franchise, “Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage,” “The Jennifer Hudson Show,” “The Pitt,” “Running Point,” “Shrinking,” “Rooster,” “The Voice” and the upcoming “Harry Potter” series. So far this year, the division has landed 13 new series orders and 13 series renewals, while “The Pitt” just landed six Emmys — including its second for outstanding drama.

Dungey also took on oversight of WBD’s U.S. Networks in 2025, including Discovery Channel, Food Network, HGTV, Investigation Discovery, TLC, Adult Swim, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, Cooking Channel, HLN, OWN, Science Channel, TBS, TNT, Travel Channel, Tru TV and Turner Classic Movies.

When Variety spoke to Dungey last month, she said she had met with Ellison in more of a “getting to know you” setting. Beyond that, she expressed her desire to stick with the company post-merger: “I love my team at Warner Bros. Television Group. I love our shows, our talent. And I’ve become very happy in my U.S. networks role, which was something that I didn’t see coming almost two years ago. The best-case scenario for me is something that allows me to continue to play around in both of these spaces.”

Among the possible setups that observers have spitballed was the idea of splitting their oversight between networks and studios. But if Cheeks does take control of the entire TV business, the biggest question will be whether Dungey will opt to remain and report to him. Insiders say the two have a good rapport, particularly as Warner Bros. TV has been a hefty supplier of series to CBS over the years — including the successful crop of Chuck Lorre comedies that have aired on the Eye.

Beyond that, the question also remains as to how Warner Bros. TV (run by president Brett Paul and creative affairs president Clancy Collins White), CBS Studios (run by president David Stapf), and Paramount TV Studios (run by Matt Thunell) will all be integrated.

CBS Studios is also a major enterprise, producing more than 60 series, while Paramount TV Studios has a hefty slate including the Taylor Sheridan shows.

Currently, Stapf and Thunell report to Cheeks, while Paul and Collins White report to Dungey. There could be a scenario where Warner Bros. TV, CBS Studios and Paramount TV Studios continue as separate labels.

Cheeks had previously been president and CEO of CBS, having joined Paramount in March 2020. This repped his second stint there, having first joined MTV Networks (a part of the then-Viacom company) in 1998 and later taking on roles including exec VP of business affairs and general counsel for the Viacom Music and Entertainment Groups.

Cheeks later moved to NBC in 2012 as president of business operations and late-night programming, then became co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and later as vice chairman of NBCUniversal Content Studios.

Deadline was first to report of Cheeks’ potential new role at Skydance.

I was a classical musician growing up, so I’m probably more disposed than most to like a movie set in the classical-music world. Then again, that could mean that I set a higher bar for authenticity when it comes to depicting it. There’s no doubt that the cinema’s reigning masterpiece of classical-music drama is “Tár” — a great movie in so many other ways that that remains only one dimension of it. But Todd Field inhabited that world, and allowed the audience to do so, in a way that no previous director had. Two other films leap to mind that have the ring of deep-dish classical-music reality: “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” which beautifully caught the experience of studying music in high school, and “Maestro,” a movie I may have enjoyed more than others, even though it left out a ton of stuff about Leonard Bernstein (like, for instance, the heart of his conducting career in the ’50s and ’60s!), because I instinctively filled all of that in.

Viewed on that scale, “Behemoth!,” Tony Gilroy’s drama about a professional cellist, played with perky mystery by Pedro Pascal, scores on the level of authenticity. Pascal’s character, a renowned musician named Alex Serian, has been a member of various world-class symphony orchestras, notably in Chicago, but the film presents us with a more plugged-in contempo angle on this kind of career. In the new era, orchestras are foundering, the pay isn’t what it used to be, and even a virtuoso string musician might need a side gig or two. For Alex, that has meant playing in orchestras that are assembled to record movie scores — a major industry, and one that “Behemoth!” depicts as being nearly as high maintenance as the prestige symphony circuit.

The conductors who oversee the recording of the movie scores are portrayed as hyper-demanding corporate perfectionists. (One of them, a prima donna played by Thomas Kretschmann, makes it feel like you’re seeing Klaus Kinski going to work for Skydance.) And from the film’s opening scene, which immerses us in the lingo of rehearsal, which is a mixture of old-school classical Euro directives (“pianissimo”) and Hollywood jargon (“new ink”), we’re right there in the cavernous recording studio, feeling the heat and the nuance.

My all-time pet peeve in classical-music films is that characters who are supposed to be playing the violin or cello almost never look real — you can see from a mile away that they’re faking it, imitating the finger and bow movements like crude mimes. Tony Gilroy has solved this problem in the most committed way possible: He had Pedro Pascal learn to play the cello. That’s really Pascal doing it, which is why everything about his motions looks real, from the vibrato to the bowing to the way he moves his head. That devotion works for the film. It allows us to feel that Alex is as genuine in his talent as a professional athlete or a star chef. Virtuosity is the air he breathes. Not every orchestra player is a virtuoso, of course, but Alex, we learn, was a child prodigy who came from a high-powered musical family (we see a clip of him playing Bach as a 6-year-old on “The Tonight Show”). That’s his pedigree, and it’s also his problem, since the family craziness has messed him up.

In addition to presenting its musical demimonde with reverent accuracy, “Behemoth!” has another quality going for it: The film is playful. It’s not a symphony — it’s a scherzo. This is only the fourth feature Gilroy has directed (it’s his first since “The Bourne Legacy” in 2012), but coming off the “Star Wars” television series “Andor,” which he created and was the showrunner for, he makes his enthusiasm for the filmmaking process palpable. For most of the film, Alex is doing movie-score session work, and Gilroy introduces an impish device: We see and hear the orchestra recording a score (the music might be suspenseful, romantic, pensive), until seconds later it becomes the score of “Behemoth!” itself. I’m not honestly sure I can say what this slightly meta gambit accomplishes, but it’s clever and fun. Gilroy got no less than nine acclaimed film composers to contribute their talents to the movie (they include James Newton Howard and Alan Silvestri and are billed as the Behemoth! Collective). But he could easily have executed the exact same trick with just one composer.

Leaping around in time, Gilroy draws us into Alex’s world with an effervescent wink at the badness of his behavior. Alex is wriggling out of a fling with Carol, the wife of one of the Chicago orchestra’s wealthy patrons — she’s played by Olivia Wilde, who radiates such intense stalker energy here that we’re not quite sure how to react. Alex just keeps calm, and that’s what Pascal does, more or less, throughout the movie. Alex’s life is falling apart, yet somehow he’s the eye of the storm; everyone around him is screwier than he is. With an elegant mustache and perfect gelled hair that dips down onto his forehead, Pedro Pascal has never looked more dashing — he’s like a refined Burt Reynolds, or maybe a passive Brando. Between his classical chops and his glamorous looks, women drop for Alex, but he’s an artist who has drifted through life, drinking and having flings, always ready to move on to the next woman and the next city and the next gig. It’s a frictionless life he revels in. But something’s got to give.

Gilroy seems to have been influenced by the elliptical quality of “Tár,” though not always to good effect. I enjoyed, to a point, the cut-and-paste chronology of “Behemoth!,” but there’s a flaw in it: The actors look identical in every scene, so some of it is confusing — like the episode in Dallas where Alex meets Nadia (Eva Victor), a star violinist who seems his match. They sleep together. But then, after a fraught phone conversation with the billionaire who wants to marry her, she lashes out at Alex (who has done nothing wrong), and we’re not sure where this is going or why. A few scenes later, tragedy has struck. But did all these events happen one after another or years apart? We figure it out, but Gilroy should have made it easier to read.

Alex, after the debacle of his break-up with Wilde’s clingy diva in Chicago, returns to Los Angeles, where he grew up. He can get session work there, and does. He still seems mellow, but he’s bestirred by a pet obsession: listening to the original avant-pop compositions posted online by Viviana (Alexa Swinton), a 15-year-old girl who has become a local celebrity. It turns out that he’s got a connection to her; she’s Nadia’s daughter. But why is he so interested? He’s just got…a feeling.

Alex’s brother, a talented but scruffy podcast host, is played by Will Arnett with a lived-in self-doubt more interesting than anything about his character in “Is This Thing On?” It’s through their conversations that we start to piece together Alex’s troubled family life — but here, once again, Pascal suffers in such a placid way that we keep wanting more. The movie finally comes to a head in an expertly staged suspense sequence where Alex, pretending to be a caterer’s assistant, sneaks into Nadia’s stone mansion, finds what he was looking for, and then has to sneak out. Naturally, the music playing under all this is “movie music.”

What, in the end, is “Behemoth!,” apart from a movie with a dismally bad title? (You can’t remember it. You can’t pronounce it. And it’s hard to say what, exactly, it means or why it carries an exclamation point — though it is, of course, the title of one of the films that Alex is helping to record the score for.) “Behemoth!” is a midlife-crisis movie. It’s a classical-musician movie. It’s a mild romantic mystery. It’s Tony Gilroy fiddling around with pure movie form. (He’s a sly orchestrator of big-screen storytelling.) But 19 years after “Michael Clayton,” he’s still looking for a subject that will allow him to do what he did so masterfully in that movie: heighten our perceptions of the world along with our emotions, until they become one.

CBS News is tapping another ABC News veteran to lend a hand with the ambitious task of trying to move its morning- and evening-news programs out of third place.

Steven Baker, a former executive producer at ABC News’ “Nightline,” joined CBS News as a consultant earlier this week, according to two people familiar with the matter. During his tenure at ABC News, Baker gained a reputation as someone willing to experiment and try new things. Baker supervised an effort, for example, to try and put “Nightline” programming in places other than the post-Jimmy Kimmel slot at ABC. Under his aegis, for example, “Nightline” developed an hour-long special program for the Freeform cable network that aimed for younger viewers. In 2020, he helped orchestrate a “takeover” of the “Nightline” timeslot by “Turning Point,” a monthlong look at the state of race relations in the U.S.

“’Nightline’ is more than just a time slot,” Baker told Variety in 2018. “This is a brand that tells stories, no matter where it is seen.” CBS News declined to make executives available for comment.

“Steve’s going to be working with me directly as a consultant and advisor on our daily news programs,” CBS News President Tom Cibrowski said to a group of staffers, according to a person who was present at a recent meeting. “Steve’s going to bring a lot of energy and ideas, and he’s going be a great partner to the show leaders,” Cibrowski added, nodding to Jon Tower and Kim Harvey, who oversee “CBS Mornings” and “CBS Evening News,” respectively. Cibrowski said he hoped Baker would be “injecting some new energy and ideas into the programs.”

Baker had until recently been working with James Goldston, a former ABC News president who joined Candle Media, the production company led by former Disney executives Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer, to lead a nonfiction division.

The move shows CBS News relying more heavily, perhaps, on an executive with a more traditional TV-news pedigree than some of the senior executives who have been lured recently to the Paramount Skydance news division by Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News. Weiss has hired a number of veteran journalists from The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times whose main expertise is in managing traditional print-news processes. She is not the only one. NBC News in 2023 named Rebecca Blumenstein, a veteran of the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as its president of editorial.

Still, CBS News’ main challenge in the current era is in generating more TV ratings, not in the quality of its newsgathering. “CBS Mornings” lured an average of just 1.6 million viewers in the third quarter, according to Nielsen, and 256,000 among viewers between 25 and 54, the demographic coveted most by advertisers in news programming. “CBS Evening News” has seen a slight uptick in viewers compared to the year-earlier period, but its overall audience is significantly below that left by former anchor Norah O’Donnell in early 2025.

Both programs remain well behind their time-slot competitors at ABC and NBC.

Baker is the latest ABC News mainstay to join CBS. Cibrowski was a former senior executive at ABC News who played a significant role in boosting “Good Morning America” past “Today” for the first time in years. Matt Guttman, a former ABC News journalist, has enjoyed significant screen time at CBS News since joining in 2026. And Wendy Fisher, once a senior ABC News executive, oversees broader newsgathering and weather coverage across CBS News and CBS’ owned stations.

CBS News has tested other innovations in recent weeks. On “CBS Evening News,” for example, new segments like “The Big Question” and “The Good Stuff” are viewed as distinctive pieces of the program that not only serve as regular features, but can be detached from the show and featured as pieces of short-form content suitable for viewers of digital platforms.

“God of War Laufey” will release Feb. 16, 2027 from PlayStation’s Santa Monica Studios. Pre-orders go live on Sept. 29.

The prequel game in the action-adventure franchise centers on Laufey, also known as Faye. “God of War Laufey” follows the legendary warrior beyond death through the Everywhen, the afterlife of the gods.

Fans who pre-order the game will receive a special armor set, cosmetic appearance and in-game resource pack.

The game also features a new weapon for Faye in the Everywhen. The enchanted bow with a shifting serpent form gives players a powerful weapon in close and ranged combat.

See more gaming news from the week in the roundup below.

TECH

Discord is launching Discord Ads Manager and Video Quests, allowing advertisers to expand their outreach.

Available now, Discord Ads Manager is the platform’s first campaign management platform, and its self-serve access enables Discord advertising to reach smaller studios and marketers. It will also offer an auction-based delivery and a dynamic cost model where advertisers can adjust their bids in real time. Full self-serve access is set for early 2027.

Video Quests is available through Discord Ads Manager and serves as a rewarded video ad format where players can watch and earn Orbs, receiving their award in roughly 15 seconds. Designed to drive player engagement, Video Quests shows advertisers how long the player chose to watch.

RELEASE DATES

“Limerence” will launch for PC on Oct. 29.

Suffering from personal loss, Claire seeks comfort from an AI relationship app, LiAIson, where she creates a customized partner tailored to her individual needs. But her online relationship soon starts to carry over into her real life, posing the question of where AI should draw the line.

Players will determine Claire’s journey, re-evaluating past conversations and shaping her self-perception. “Limerence” is co-developed by Salix Games and Gameinaframe.

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Wizards of the Coast announced on Wednesday “Secret Lair: Corn Maze Superdrop,” a new collection of special, limited “Magic: The Gathering” cards arriving on Oct. 12.

This superdrop highlights artists, films and more including Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth,” and Netflix’s “KPop Demon Hunters.”

There are eight drops: “Secret Lair x Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Should You Need Us,” “Secret Lair x Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Fear Me, Love Me,” Secret Lair x Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: Through the Labyrinth,” “Secret Lair x KPop Demon Hunters: How It’s Done,” “Secret Lair x Marvel: Zombies,” “Artist Series: Veronique Meignaud,” “Manufactured Grounds by See Machine” and “Peace, Love, & Treefolk.”

All “Secret Lair: Corn Maze Superdrop” drops will be available at 9 a.m. on Oct. 12 in traditional foil edition for $39.99 and non-foil edition for $29.99.

PARTNERSHIPS

Media company Critical Role and game studio Lichtund announced a publishing partnership for “Rockbeasts,” an upcoming RPG game where players lead a 90s rock-and-roll band to fame.

Set to launch in 2027, “Rockbeasts” allows gamers to “book gigs, manage money and fragile egos, keep equipment running, schedule rehearsals and navigate the music industry’s moral minefield, from predatory record labels and jaded venue owners to hard-nosed executives. Every decision shapes the band’s relationships, reputation and future.”

Critical Role will serve as the co-publisher, also offering voice actors for the game.

NEW VENTURES

Entertainment studio Stone Kite launched from “Halo” and “Destiny” creator Jason Jones in collaboration with best-selling author Margaret Stohl.

The studio’s first original universe is a near-future story of a global war between humanity and rogue AI-driven robots, “One Zero One.” The first chapter, written by “Arrival’ screenwriter Eric Heisserer, is available now as a free digital comic.

Rather than starting with a game, comic or film and then adapting the concept, Stone Kite will bring creators into the process to build the world together.

“I’ve spent my career creating books, games, comics, film and television, and I’ve seen how often the medium that tells the first story ends up defining everything that comes after it,” Stohl said in a statement. “Stone Kite is about breaking down those old media silos. Instead of starting in one medium and adapting outward, we bring the best global creators from different disciplines into the room from day one to shape the world together.”

Stone Kite’s founding team includes Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Stephen Wacker and veterans of Activision Blizzard, Marvel and DC. The slate boasts more than 250 creators, including Jay Roach (“Austin Powers,” “Meet the Parents), Akela Cooper (“M3GAN”), Stephen Graham Jones, Christian Ward and Kyle Lambert.

NEW RELEASES

“The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered” has launched on Battle.net.

The new version of Geralt’s adventure will feature updated visuals, improved quest tracking and revamped combat, which includes more reactive enemies and smoother movements. Weapon and armor transmogrification as well as new accessibility features are also included.

Available on Battle.net, “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — Remastered” is in partnership with CD Projekt Red.

TRAILERS

“Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4” releases Oct. 23, with the PC trailer now available.

As announced earlier this year, “Modern Warfare 4” is “Set against a rapidly escalating global conflict centered on the Korean Peninsula, ‘Modern Warfare 4’ pushes the series into darker and more dangerous territory as a full-scale invasion of South Korea threatens to destabilize the world.”

Players who digitally pre-order “Modern Warfare 4” can begin preloading on Oct. 15. Campaign Early Access begins Oct. 16.

The Infinity Ward-developed game launches Oct. 23 on Xbox Series X and S, PlayStation 5 and PC via Battle.net, Xbox on PC, Steam and Nintendo Switch 2.

Watch the PC trailer below.

IN-GAME EVENTS

“Fortnite” is celebrating this spooky season with Fortnitemares presenting a cursed cast and new characters coming all month from” Five Nights at Freddy’s,” “Hazbin Hotel,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Beetlejuice,” “Obsession” and more.

Players can drop into Freaky Fields or the new Nightmare Neighborhood POI, where Freddy Krueger is waiting. Defeat him to claim Freddy’s Nightmare claws, which let you teleport into range and slash opponents.

Reveal enemies with the new Bonerattler SMG and take aim with returning weapons like the Wood Stake Shotgun and Pumpkin Launcher.

They can also activate cursed cartridge overrides that grant invisibility while sprinting, boost damage at low health or conceal your squad as Halloween props. Take on “Five Nights at Freddy’s” animatronic bosses to possess one and terrorize the map.

The Horde Rush LTM is back, and on Oct. 8 an updated Nitemare Island arrives in reload alongside the “Stranger Things” and Squid Grounds maps.

Outfits from “Five Nights at Freddy’s” show battle damage and are live in the shop now, with “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” “Black Clover,” “Obsession” and many more outfits and accessories to follow throughout October.

The Israeli Defense Forces has slammed the documentary “NAZA,” calling it “manipulative,” “misleading” and “based on substantial factual errors.”

The film premiered at Venice Film Festival last month, where it received a 24.5-minute standing ovation. It has since screened at the San Sebastián and New York film festivals, and will open in U.S. theaters next week before streaming for free on The Guardian website in late November. The British newspaper are co-producers of the movie, which is directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor.

In its statement, the IDF said that it did not have a chance to view the documentary prior to its premiere and claimed the directors did not put forward the allegations in the film to the IDF before publishing. The IDF has now responded to the numerous claims in the film, which takes its title from the phrase “collateral damage” in Hebrew (“Nezek Agavi”).

Among other points, the IDF said that it operates under binding directives that “explicitly” distinguish between military operatives and uninvolved citizens; it has never planned or carried out a strike in Gaza in which 500 civilians were killed, as one anonymous contributor claims in the film; and it has never used AI to select targets to strike, saying these are only ever planned by “relevant professionals.”

All 24 contributors in “NAZA” are anonymous, filmed against a nighttime skyline in Tel Aviv. In its statement, the IDF said “it is apparent that in various cases interviewees raise speculation and assumptions without a factual basis.”

They added that the filmmakers also left out crucial context such as showing the full chain of command, which they said includes roles dedicated to “mitigating civilian harm,” and played down the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, in which over 1,000 people were killed and over 250 hostages were taken.

“The film ‘NAZA’ presents a distorted, misleading and disingenuous picture of the IDF’s target planning and striking process,” the statement reads. “The film’s narrative is based on substantial factual errors stemming from manipulative misrepresentations of reality.”

Contacted by Variety for comment, a spokesperson for Guardian News & Media said on behalf of the filmmakers: “The IDF’s attempt to portray the 24 participants in ‘NAZA’ as junior-ranking officers involved only in the early stages of the targeting process is false. They include officers and soldiers who were involved in multiple stages of the targeting process in Gaza, including intelligence, operations and the final authorization process.”

The Guardian added that “the process of assessing the credibility of the testimonies was rigorous. It included leaked classified documents, detailed verification of specific strikes and corroboration via a wider pool of confidential journalistic sources who did not appear on camera in the film. Over the past three years we have together interviewed more than 100 sources familiar with IDF systems used in the war in Gaza, including senior-ranking commanders directly involved in the authorization of strikes.”

The statement concluded: “The Guardian stands fully behind the film, which builds on three years of detailed reporting by the Guardian and our partners. Several highly respected news organizations have subsequently confirmed the IDF’s use of AI-driven systems in the Gaza offensive and the loosening of safeguards to protect civilians, including the New York Times, Washington Post and Associated Press.”

In “A Talent for Murder,” director Anton Corbijn takes a closer look at writer Patricia Highsmith.

Known for creating everyone’s favorite psychopath Tom Ripley, Highsmith – played by Helen Mirren – became a controversial figure because of her antisemitic and misanthropic statements.

“By all accounts, she was much worse than what we show in the film. You don’t want her to be completely unlikable. It’s difficult when you don’t actually know the person and base everything on hearsay, but she was a very difficult woman. Also to herself,” he tells Variety.

He enjoyed seeing Mirren, now in her 80s, fully embrace the role of someone who can be, well, a jerk.

“She’s a great jerk! I think it’s healthy. It’s never too late to be a bitch. I’m referring to our Highsmith, of course. Luckily, she only killed fictional characters.”

In the film, previously known as “Switzerland” after Joanna Murray-Smith’s play it’s based on – “I thought it would conjure too many images of cows and mountains,” Corbijn says – Highsmith is joined in her Swiss refuge by a young man, Edward (Alden Ehrenreich), who tries to persuade her to write another novel about Ripley.

They don’t exactly bring out the best in each other. Quite the opposite.

“They’re testing how bad people can be and how far they can go. Unfortunately, it’s always further than you’d like to think. Sometimes it has to do with generational trauma that manifests itself, or with human curiosity that leads to certain behaviors. I think it happens quite often: People get curious, and they go too far. That might be the case with Ripley, too.”

Ripley is evil, but he doesn’t look it. In “The American Friend,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley” or Netflix’s show “Ripley,” he knows how to charm his victims. That’s his superpower.

“When evil is obvious, it’s not interesting because you know it’s coming. That’s his strength, and I think that’s the strength of the film. You don’t know if you should like them or not,” notes Corbijn.

“I love how Alden can change in very minimal ways. He can be this nerdy guy, and then he can be a mean killer with cold eyes. We got really lucky with this cast.”

While the film emphasizes that the portrayal of Highsmith is “entirely fictional,” this is not the first time that Corbijn has taken on a real-life protagonist. “Control,” about Joy Division’s singer Ian Curtis, was his directorial breakthrough.

“I knew the guy, so I think it’s a very truthful film. With ‘Life,’ I didn’t know James Dean. He died the same year when I was born, so we never got to meet,” he laughs.

“You just fill in the gaps. But even Helen said that there’s something more mysterious about playing real-life characters than the ones you make up. It’s more complex and more interesting.”

Mirren famously portrayed Elizabeth II in “The Queen” and former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in “Golda.”

“It can be so powerful, too. Now, when I think of Ian, I think of Sam Riley in the film. I’m so much more familiar with him than with the real Ian Curtis!”

Corbijn first gained prominence as a photographer and music video director, working with the likes of Depeche Mode and U2. However, looking at what’s happening in the music and film industry, he can’t help but worry.

“I get very depressed thinking about A.I. replacing so much in cinema, but it’s the same with music. Take ABBA concerts with their ‘avatars’. Is everything really replaceable? It’s dangerous because we all prefer comfort over substance, and that will be our downfall. Needless to say, there’s no A.I. in my film.”

He adds: “I’m really worried about the immediate future because things are changing way too fast. I think we will respond badly to it. And too late.”

He says he feels “quite pessimistic about the world.” He’s not the only one, which might explain why Ripley keeps on returning.

“It’s as if he returns when the world aligns with his thinking, which is terrible. Maybe people are more accepting of murder today?”