New information suggests that Sony has already begun shifting its first-party focus towards the PlayStation 5. 

This information comes from an industry analyst/insider named Daniel Ahmad who took to ResetEra to report that “most of the focus for Sony [first party studios] is on PS5 right now.” While Ahmad states that this transitional period is in the very early stages, the general buzz coming from GDC was that first-party developers have begun preliminary work on future PS5 titles. 

According to Ahmad, this also means that the first PS5 development kits are out in the wild. It has previously been suggested that is the case, but Ahmad goes so far as to say that he’s “heard positive things” about the kits from those who already have their hands on them.

What’s maybe even more interesting is Ahmad’s suggestion that Sony already has “a couple of unannounced games (already existing IP) with PS4 in mind.” That seems to suggest that the company hasn’t completely abandoned the idea of producing major PS4 games and will seemingly treat the PS4 as their main focus for 2019. While we strongly believe that the next generation of gaming will start in 2020, the idea that there are still significant unannounced PS4 titles should come as good news to those who are not quite ready to make the switch. 

Still, the fact that Sony is reportedly shifting their first-party focus towards the next generation says quite a lot when you also consider that Sony has previously suggested that they are going to emphasise their first-party studios even more in the next console generation and may even look to turn more studios into first-party developers. This may be part of the reason why Microsoft was so adamant to acquire so many high-profile developers in such a short period of time. 

Speaking of Xbox, there’s no shortage of reports out there which suggest they have already begun working on their next generation of consoles and may also be prepared to unleash them as soon as 2020. 

Zack Snyder is ready to make a new movie. The project is called Army Of The Dead, and it’s one that Netflix has lifted off Warner Bros’ development plate. There’s no information on why WB decided to pass the project on to the streaming service at this time, but the budget is reportedly in the $90 million range, so it’ll be no cheap affair for Netflix.

Army Of The Dead will be Snyder’s first film since he stepped off the set of Justice League after a family tragedy, famously handing over the reins to Avengers director Joss Whedon.

THR got the exclusive on Snyder’s comeback flick, which will be set “amid a zombie outbreak in Las Vegas, during which a man assembles a group of mercenaries to take the ultimate gamble, venturing into the quarantined zone to pull off the greatest heist ever attempted.”

“There are no handcuffs on me at all with this one,” Snyder told THR. “I thought this was a good palate cleanser to really dig in with both hands and make something fun and epic and crazy and bonkers in the best possible way.

While he still loves the comic book movies of his past, the director is clearly excited about somewhat going back to his Dawn Of The Dead roots:

“I love to honour canon and the works of art, but this is the opportunity to find a purely joyful way to express myself though a genre. It will be the most kick-ass, self-aware — but not in a wink-to-the-camera way — balls-to-the-wall zombie freakshow that anyone has ever seen. No one’s ever let me completely loose [like this].”

Snyder seems eager to get back in the game now, enthusing “I love big action, I love big sequences. My movie brain starts clicking around and I was like, ‘We need to be shooting this now!’ Constructing these sequences really fired me up.”

He also told THR that he’s spent the last few years reconnecting “with photography”, noting that his last few films had been of such scope that they’d pushed him “away from the camera.”

More on Army Of The Dead as it arrives.

Channel 4 is almost ready to serve us up a nice cold slice of fresh spy drama shenanigans.

Traitors, a new thriller series starring Emma Appleton, Keeley Hawes, Michael Stuhlbarg and Luke Treadaway – among others – is a six-part series created by Bash Doran, who’s previously forged a career overseas writing for Boardwalk Empire and Masters Of Sex. She also wrote Outlaw King for Netflix (the one where Star Trek and Wonder Woman star Chris Pine did a questionable Scottish accent, with mixed results).

Here’s the first trailer for you…

And here’s the synopsis…

Traitors is a compulsive spy thriller that takes us behind the scenes of a seismic moment in global history, through the eyes of one young woman caught in the middle of it. An intimate epic set in 1945 London, Traitors is the dangerous, enthralling story of Feef, who is seduced by a rogue American spy into spying on her own country. Her task? To uncover a Russian agent in the heart of the British Government.

Channel 4 hasn’t revealed an air date for Traitors yet. All we’ve heard is the intangible promise of “coming soon”…

Polar arrived on Netflix last week to middling reviews. The consensus seemed to be that while the story itself was underwhelming and it felt a bit too early-00s for comfort, the film’s action was still decent, and no one appeared too angry to have spent two hours watching Mads Mikkelsen be at maximum Mads Mikkelsen.

The streaming service’s movie, an adaptation of the Dark Horse graphic novel Polar: Came From The Cold by Victor Santos, leaves room for a sequel in the closing minutes, and there’s plenty of story left in Santos’ source material. Buzz online also indicated that over the weekend a lot of people were taking a chance on the John Wick-y tale of an assassin who has his retirement snatched away after some influential criminals decide that maybe he shouldn’t be allowed to walk – literally and figuratively.

So, do two and two equal four at Netflix? Possibly. In a new interview with Screen Rant, director Jonas Åkerlund was asked if he would be keen to do another Polar film, based on material from the remaining books:

“Well, it’s supposed to be based on the first book, but we kind of borrowed a little bit from the second and the third book as well. And we also added some stuff that aren’t even in the book. So, we had the freedom of working with these characters as we wanted – and, yeah, the Polar story has way more to give. He actually wrote five books, and there’s a lot more stories in there; and the characters are great, so why not?”

Why not indeed? You can see the interview below…

Let’s face it: The Crimes Of Grindelwald wouldn’t be a Fantastic Beasts film without some, erm, fantastic beasts. But luckily for writer JK Rowling and director David Yates, they had a world-class army of visual effects artists at their disposal for the second installment in the latest Wizarding World film saga.

It’s a good job, too. As well as the return of Newt Scamander’s (Eddie Redmayne) existing pals like the Niffler and his pet Bowtruckle, Pickett, Beasts 2 sees the introduction of a whole new menagerie of creatures, including the magnificent, dragon-like Zouwu and the sinister, cat-aping Matagots.

It’s not just the beasts, either: The Crimes Of Grindelwald expands the scope of the first film, with the adventure taking place across 1920s Paris, London and New York. Physical sets can only go so far, meaning that the effects team also had their work cut out making the wider world look as good as its magical inhabitants.

One of the men ultimately responsible for making the onscreen magic happen is Christian Manz, a Potterverse veteran and creative director of London-based effects studio, Framestore. Along with Tim Burke, he served as The Crimes Of Grindelwald‘s joint overall VFX supervisor – and the team has now been rewarded with a Bafta nomination for their efforts.

“As we’re going through the process of creature design, Jo [Rowling] will come in and have a look at what we’ve been up to,” says Manz of the writer’s involvement in bringing her creations to the screen. “On the second film especially, she really wanted to understand the process of what we do in effects. She has a lot of input and some very definite ideas of what she wants, but she’s also willing to let other people explore her universe.”

Here, Manz takes Den of Geek through some developing FX shots, and throws in a bit of behind-the-scenes insight for good measure…

Broadening horizons

“There’s a huge amount of collaboration with [production designer] Stuart Craig and his team when it comes to deciding what’s built physically and what’s built digitally. He’s the man who’s visually created the universe that we’re playing in. I think we’re there to augment that reality, not to create it.

“For interiors like the French Ministry of Magic, the level of VFX augmentation all comes down to Stuart’s concept designs and what is going to be built physically on our backlot. For the scenes in real places like Paris, there’s a lot of background work – our backlot is big, but Paris is massive! But we could actually go and film reference plates. We digitally scanned 90 locations – full buildings and full streets, like the whole of the Avenue de l’Opéra and the Sacré-Cœur.

“I think what sets these films apart visually is there’s still a lot of set, which is there lighting the actors and giving them something tactile to interact with. But we’re obviously still creating a massive part of it; we’re like the digital construction crew. We have a lot of magical creatures rampaging around, and one of the biggest reasons why a lot of the environment is digital is to allow for that creature interaction to be as authentic as possible.”

Niffler returns

“We had a physical version of Newt’s case on the set for when Eddie points his wand at it, but then we replaced it with a CGI one so we could animate it to open and let the Niffler out, before he sits on top of it. [The first picture] is the stage before the animation is rendered, where we work out how the animation is working in the scene.

“We go through a three-stage process with visual effects. The first is ‘pre-vis’, where we create a lot of the set-pieces as lo-fi animated sequences before filming so that we’ve got a guide to shoot what we need. The second stage is ‘post-vis’, where as we’re filming, we’ll start putting lo-fi versions of the visual effects into every single shot – so as they’re cutting the film together, they’re seeing the creatures. And then the third process is that the animation goes off to be done properly by all the companies all over the world who are doing the work. There are about 1,500 people working on the VFX on a film like this, which is bigger than the crew that actually shot it.”

Enter the Zouwu

“It’s about a year’s work to get that shot looking great. We have puppeteers who have performance experience with very low-tech puppets, and we have a Zouwu head. The reason for that is if the actors are just looking at a tennis ball, you just don’t get a performance or an interaction that makes the shot believable. And then it doesn’t matter what we do. If the actor isn’t feeling like he’s actually touching that thing, then the shot’s broken no matter how well we render our Zouwu, so that’s a really important part of the process.

“For the Zouwu itself, we started the initial simple designs in March 2017. And then by the time we were filming – from July to Christmas 2017 – we’d kind of worked out what he would look like, because we’d done lots of little animation tests to show David and Eddie, so he knew what he was acting against and how it behaves. And then we go through to post-production, where the artists at Framestore are building the creature for real, deciding how this creature looks when it’s fully fleshed out – what the mane is made of, how much hair it’s got… By March 2018, they just start putting it into the shots and then they had until the end of September to finish it. So it’s really much more than a year’s work.”

Wizard’s best friend

“Giving CG creatures a personality is challenging. What we’re trying to do here is to not think of the beasts as characters, but as real animals. We’re always looking at references of real animals. Like with the Zouwu – this huge Chinese dragon-like creature with big eyes. Getting some emotion out of it was quite hard. But the scene in the film where Newt brings up its little toy to get it into the case and it behaves exactly as a dog would do… Every time I watch the film, I see people laugh at that because they see something that they see in reality at home, only in this massive creature.

“With Pickett, it has always been a little bit more difficult because he is literally a little stick man. These pictures are from the beginning of the film, where he takes the button from Newt’s coat and then chases it. We thought it would be funnier if he doesn’t notice Newt at all at first – and then suddenly he does notice him, but carries on for a bit. Again, we are relating to the sorts of things that domestic animals do that we all see.

“The most difficult thing is to work out how to make those moments really sing. With Pickett, it’s almost like the Gromit effect – those simple poses and expressions that replicate what we see as humans in each other, which get across those emotions – that he’s really cross or he’s really happy. Everybody loves those moments because you really get his connection with Newt.”

Cat people

“As the guardians of the French Ministry, the Matagots had to have a bit more menace. We went through quite a journey with the design of them. Because they are more ‘familiars’ than beasts, initially we had them posed on two legs – almost human-like but cat-like at the same time.

“But again, we went back to nature. We started looking at bald cats, and how evil they can look. And then we added the slow gait of a prowling tiger. Then we started playing around with the proportions, so that they’ve got greater limb length and more human-like front legs so it just feels a little bit more uncomfortable. And then obviously the glowing blue eyes, so they have have a bit more sense of threat – we initially tried them with more realistic eyes, but they just looked bizarre.

“The idea of them turning into real black cats came to us quite early in preproduction. We had a wonderful artist who had the idea of what they would look like when they come out of the magical boundaries of the Ministry and how they would appear in the real world. That idea actually did make the cut. It’s a good example of where we are given the freedom by David and Jo to play and come up with stuff, which makes these films – and we’re going into the third one now – such a collaborative experience. It’s not a bad job!”

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald will be available in the UK via digital from 9 March, and it’ll be out on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray and DVD on 18 March.

David Lynch, master of weirdness, took a run at Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi saga Dune back in 1984. It would be understating it to say that it didn’t go well. It went even less well for Alejandro Jodorowsky, who spent years trying to get his adaptation made. But if anyone can make Dune both an eye-popping reality and actually good, it’s the man behind Arrival and Blade Runner 2049, surely?

We’ll be keeping everything we know about Denis Villeneuve’s Dune right here. You’ll be able to find details on the cast, news about the direction the movie is taking, posters, filming info and even trailers, when they arrive.

Feel free to check back here for more, as it happens.

Dune cast

Oscar Isaac (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Ex Machina) is the latest cast member to sign up for Dune, according to THR. He’ll be playing Duke Leto Atreides, father of Paul ‘Muad’Dib’ Atreides (Timothée Chalamet). Paul’s mother, Lady Jessica, will be played by Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible – Fallout).

Chalamet was the first person to be confirmed for Dune, as the leading man and as the central character of the story.

The young actor is a white-hot rising star, coming off critically acclaimed performances in Lady Bird, Call Me By Your Name and Beautiful Boy.

“Denis is one of my favourite filmmakers,” he told The Playlist. “What’s especially inspiring about Denis’ films are the size of them. They reach a big audience. These are films meant to play in front of big crowds. And, conversely, he’s also made movies like Incendies that are like intimate affairs. So, that would be a dream come true and is going to be a dream come true. And, I’m chomping at the bit for that experience. I can’t wait.”

Other confirmed members of the cast include Dave Bautista as Glossu Rabban Harkonnen (Beast), who will be reuniting with Villeneuve again after having a small role in the director’s 2017 effort Blade Runner 2049. Stellan Skarsgard is also aboard, and so is Charlotte Rampling. She’s been cast as the galactic emperor’s Truthsayer, Gaius Helen Mohiam, aka Reverend Mother.

Dune director

Director Denis Villeneuve supposedly turned down the chance to direct Bond 25 in favour of pressing ahead with his version of Dune. He revealed in an interview back in March of last year that “Dune will probably take two years to make” and that “The goal is to make two films, maybe more”. So there you have it, he’s in for the long haul with this adaptation!

Villeneuve’s last film, Blade Runner 2049, received plenty of critical acclaim, but it didn’t find success at the box office, which was disheartening. Legendary Entertainment, the company behind this film, are likely hoping that Dune won’t meet a similar fate.

Dune plot

Frank Herbert wrote six Dune books before his death in 1986 and since then the story has continued under the pen of his son, Brian, and Kevin J Anderson. Adaptaing the sprawling material is an absolutely mammoth task that even the television version of the story has struggled with, so it’ll be interesting to see how these new films handle this virtually impossible duty.

Dune is set in a complex futuristic society in the year 10,191. The human race has mastered space travel, and colonised planets throughout the universe. Initially focusing on the planet Caladan, Duke Leto of the House of Atreides (Oscar Isaac) is about to take over the role of governor of Arrakis, a desert planet that produces a popular drug (the spice must flow!). Leto, Jessica, and son Paul (Chalamet) start to suspect that they’ve been set up by the Harkonnens, a rival family, but he still decides to move forward with his settlement plans on Arrakis, despite grave warnings that tragedy may befall him and his family if he does so.

Dune release date

The project will begin filming on location in Budapest and Jordan this spring. We’re still looking at a 2021 release date for Dune, until we hear otherwise.

Detroit: Become Human and Heavy Rain developer Quantic Dream will no longer be a PlayStation exclusive developer.

In a recent interview, Quantic Dream bosses Guillaume de Fondaumière and David Cage revealed that they have reached an agreement with Chinese publisher NetEase in order to secure funding for future projects. The trade-off of this arrangement is that the studio will no longer exclusively develop games for PlayStation.

“Our objective is to be present on all platforms where there is an audience that can enjoy our experiences,” said de Fondaumière. “We will, of course, continue developing on PlayStation, a platform that we know very well after having worked with Sony for 12 years, but we will also be present on all other relevant platforms.”

While the news that Quantic Dream will no longer be a PlayStation exclusive developer is significant enough, there’s actually quite a bit more to this story. For those who don’t remember, Quantic Dream was the subject of a fairly extensive investigation involving complaints of harassment and an inhospitable workplace. The extent of these allegations was significant even if the investigation itself was ongoing. However, NetEase says they considered the allegations when making this decision and decided to move ahead with the funding anyway.

“A company of our size and stature doesn’t make investments lightly, and we have of course taken great care in analysing all aspects of Quantic Dream, in particular, the studio culture,” said NetEase executive, Simon Zhu. “This is very important for us, as we take great care of these matters in our own company. We have been able to spend time with the Quantic Dream team, to get to know the studio culture, and we have seen nothing that points to any of the allegations published by certain press.”

The extent and possible fallout of these allegations not only means that Quantic Dream could be facing an uncertain future, but it also makes you wonder whether the studio’s hit and miss critical reception will be further complicated by the studio’s recent social baggage. In any case, it certainly makes sense that NetEase would want Quantic Dream games on as many platforms as possible in order to mitigate the potential damages.