Payday-in-Fortnite isn't the day's only big news out of everybody's favorite violent clowns rob banks franchise. Starbreeze, in partnership with Vice Studios, has also done a deal with Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's G-Unit Film and Television to "executive produce" an adaptation of Payday.
What sort of adaptation is being made—that is, television or movie—isn't specified. The deal between Starbreeze and Vice, announced in March, says only that the two will "adapt Payday for audiences beyond games, across screen and other formats," and that's the case in today's announcement, too.
"G-Unit Film and TV has built cinematic crime stories that connect with audiences around the world," said the man they call Fiddy (do they still call him that?). "Teaming up with Starbreeze and Vice Studios and bringing the world of Payday to the screen gives us the chance to build something big, a high-energy franchise that pushes the heist genre forward."
"Payday has always been about the fantasy of getting away with it," Starbreeze CEO Adolf Kristjansson said. "Curtis and G-Unit don't do subtle, and neither do we. This is not about playing it safe; it's about doing the franchise justice with people who are as immersed in the world as we are."
If there's one thing I've learned from Michael Mann, it's that capping off your bank robbery with a running firefight against heavily armed cops is not a good idea, so I'm not sure how that "getting away with it" analogy really holds up here. Jackson does seem well suited to the task, though: His debut album is called Get Rich or Die Tryin' and its followup was The Massacre, so if nothing else at least he's got the right mindset.
He also appeared with Val Kilmer at the 2009 American Music Awards, for some reason.
(Image credit: Getty Images - ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)
Also unclear is how this jibes with Starbreeze's 2023 deal with production company Stockholm Syndrome "to develop a Payday story for TV or film." That isn't mentioned in today's announcement, so whether this new deal follows onto that one somehow or supersedes it entirely, I do not know—I've reached out to Starbreeze to ask, and will update if I receive a reply.
The Joker is Batman’s most iconic villain, and any actor stepping into the role faces the weight of decades of comics history and incredible performances from their predecessors. Cesar Romero’s cackling clown was perfect for the silly 1966 Batman show, but Jack Nicholson made Joker a terrifying gangster in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman film. Mark Hamill’s maniacal laughter and sinister charm became the defining version of Joker for the generation who grew up on Batman: The Animated Series, while Heath Ledger disappeared into the role as portrayed the villain as a twisted avatar of chaos. Now, we have a new interpretation of the Clown Prince of Crime, and it's one of the most haunting yet.
Overwatch is making big changes to its battle pass as part of Season 4, with a new multi-track system that even gives players an option to swap out and replace a skin they don't want.
As explained in a new "Director's Take" blog post by Overwatch product director Chris McCabe, Blizzard said it recognizes that due to Overwatch's ever-expanding roster of 50+ heroes, not every battle pass will have rewards for the heroes a particular player is most excited about.
The solution Blizzard is introducing is to not only break the battle pass into smaller chunks so players can more quickly pursue the rewards that interest them the most, but also offer an option to change some of the rewards entirely.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiIquLrEqC4
Starting in Season 4, players will be able to, once per premium battle pass purchase, "hack" a legendary skin at the end of a reward track and replace it with a "curated list of past Overwatch shop and loot box skins," McCabe said.
"So, if you're a Tank player who's not interested in the Damage and Support skins in your battle pass, you can use your Tier Hack to swap that Cassidy skin with one you'll appreciate more," McCabe said. "Perhaps a Legendary Reinhardt skin with more crayon and duct tape than chrome? Up to you."
The pool of skins that can be used to replace one from the battle pass will change every season, and will always include skins for heroes across all three of the game's roles. Season 4 will feature 12 legendary skins as part of the Tier Hack pool to choose from.
This new Tier Hack system will go hand-in-hand with Overwatch's new "track"-based battle pass. Instead of one, linear, 80-tier list of rewards players need to unlock in order, the battle pass will be divided into six chunks. Players will need to complete a shorter introductory track for each season but can then choose to make progress towards any of the other five reward tracks. What track is active can be changed at any time. After all six tracks are complete, players will progress towards prestige titles and rewards as usual.
A look at Overwatch's new battle pass interface.
Blizzard's free-to-play hero shooter is hardly the first to employ this type of battle pass system. It's also been done in other live-service games like Call of Duty, Battlefield 6, and Blizzard's own Diablo 4, just to name a few, something Blizzard is more than aware of. McCabe said Blizzard isn't trying to reinvent the wheel, but give players more choice over what rewards to go for first.
Despite the new track system and a UI/UX makeover, Blizzard made clear the number of rewards in the battle pass, and the amount of work required to make progress, isn't changing.
"Instead, our goal is to give you more control over what rewards you unlock, and in what order," McCabe said.
Overwatch Season 4 launches August 11, and alongside its battle pass changes, will introduce a new MEKA Tank hero, D.Mon, to the roster. In other Overwatch news, Blizzard announced last season that the game's newest core game mode, Stadium, would not receive new content going forward. Despite that news, Overwatch seems to be riding high of late overall, with a recent report attributing the shooter's recent success as a key reason for why Blizzard is now Xbox's top studio.
First spotted by Eurogamer, ExplorEverythingOnce on the Battlefield subreddit claims to have received a full refund on Battlefield 6 from Steam support after 470 hours logged, well in excess of the platform's standard refund window of two hours within two weeks.
ExplorEverythingOnce supplied a redacted screenshot of their Steam purchase history, showing a full refund of BF6's more deluxe "Phantom Edition," which they claim to have purchased on launch day. They did not supply proof of playtime or communication with Steam support, leaving an outside chance that a rapid purchase and refund was made to back up the initial post.
But Steam does have a history of offering refunds outside the usual window in extenuating circumstances. In this case, Explor's stated reason for pursuing the refund, which they claim proved persuasive to Steam support, was the surprise removal of multiple popular modes from Battlefield 6's standard quickplay queue. For Explor, the killer was the removal of Rush, their preferred gametype across those 470 hours.
A small, school marmy part of me wants to point out that you might have gotten your money's worth with a game after 470 hours. At the same time, if you make a live service game, you should prepare for live service outrage. It is, I think, a failure on Battlefield Studios' part to effectively downgrade the experience like this.
"I've been a Steam customer for 22 years and have 2500 games on my account," Explor wrote in a comment on the original post. "I have only ever requested a refund once in that entire time until today."
Battlefield Studios presented the controversial mode removal as being in the interest of queue times and healthy matchmaking, consolidating the bulk of the playerbase into a smaller number of supposedly more popular modes. It's going over like a lead balloon, though, with a wave of negative recent reviews on Steam criticizing the decision. Comments under Battlefield Studios' announcement on X and posts on the Battlefield 6 subreddit are similarly hostile.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day has swung into theaters and shattered numerous records; everyone and their Aunt May went to see this film, it seems. And thankfully, it’s good! After a trilogy of Tom Holland movies that purposefully went in a different direction than what fans had come to expect of the character in prior adaptations--and to divisive results--Brand New Day ties up this iteration of Peter Parker in a much more familiar web.
In the latest film, the hero is devoted to his career of fighting crime, with zero time left for a personal life; he has to wrestle with his moral compass in order to stop the bad guy while remaining the hero; and he lives in a rundown Manhattan apartment that likely still costs multiple thousands of dollars. However, one of the movie’s greatest strengths also doubles as a point of weakness, particularly if you return to the Marvel's Spider-Man games developed by Insomniac after watching it.
Despite Brand New Day’s best intentions to move Spider-Man toward his roots and away from his ties to the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe, the movie is still absolutely a part of the MCU machine. It sees Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk return to the films, while Jon Bernthal’s Punisher finally gets to make his big screen debut. We also get a new iteration of a popular character from Marvel comics, who ultimately acts as the film’s big bad.
Spider-Man and Punisher team up in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
I call this one of the movie’s greatest strengths, because their inclusion, in my opinion, is how Marvel should be handling these kinds of crossovers. Their appearances feel natural and meaningful to the narrative rather than to simply satisfy contractual obligations or have them filmed on green screen to be inserted into existing scenes. Their interactions with Peter, both as himself and his heroic alter ego, help bolster the webhead’s story while teaching the characters meaningful lessons of their own.
However, the inclusion of all these other characters also opens up the film to some critique. While I enjoyed the story director Destin Daniel Cretton and his crew chose to tell with the film’s shadowy villain, the narrative could have been much better served if that role was actually filled by a member of Spider-Man’s rogues gallery.
Early on in the production of the film, it was heavily speculated Brand New Day's story would include Mr. Negative, the villainous alter ego of Martin Li who, when not organizing crime, helps run a charity for the homeless called F.E.A.S.T. While there’s the simple connection that Mr. Negative was introduced in the Brand New Day arc of Spider-Man comics, there’s also the fact that the villain of the movie is able to inhabit the minds of other people.
While Mr. Negative cannot possess others directly, he does have the ability to persuade them to do what he says, and with some tinkering to the script, he easily could have served as the movie’s antagonist while keeping a lot of the other elements of its story intact. Instead, the film features a character in that role that will leave Peter’s world and go onto serve as a foundation in a different corner of the MCU, and because of that choice, Brand New Day is ultimately tainted by sins akin to those in the first Tom Holland trilogy.
Mr. Negative as depicted in Marvel's Spider-Man 2.
Over four films, many characters have come and gone from Peter’s orbit, pulled away by the gravity of other MCU projects or have exited due to narrative developments, some of which occur outside of the Spider-Man movies themselves. But one of the big draws to Spidey as a character is how interconnected his web of both allies and enemies is, and that is expertly displayed in the Marvel’s Spider-Man games from Insomniac.
Martin Li is integral to both Marvel's Spider-Man and Marvel's Spider-Man 2. In the first game, his actions as Mr. Negative lead to the death of Miles Morales’ father midway through its campaign. Miles, who becomes another Spider-Man in his own game and serves as one of the protagonists in Marvel's Spider-Man 2, has one of the best moments in all three titles when confronting Li toward the end of that game.
Li, who is trying to repent for his past crimes, teams up with Miles in an attempt to save Peter’s life. When it looks like Li might have to sacrifice himself in order to do so, Miles decides to try and reconcile with the former villain, despite having mixed feelings about it. “I won’t forgive you. It’s just not in me,” Miles says. “But I can’t carry this hate for you anymore, man. So let’s set things right.” It’s just one of the many powerful moments across the trilogy of games, and that power comes from the series’ excellent world-building.
In Brand New Day we get a glimpse at Spider-Man’s rogues gallery with an opening montage of the superhero’s escapades since the events of 2021’s No Way Home. However, the only villain who gets any real screen time is Scorpion. Michael Mando’s Mac Gargan, who had a brief appearance in the first Tom Holland movie Homecoming, finally returns as a full-fledged supervillain. Yet despite being a classic Spider-Man antagonist and having been established in the MCU, Gargan serves as nothing more than a possessed puppet in Brand New Day.
In the comics, as well as other adaptations, Gargan becomes the Scorpion in an experiment funded by J. Jonah Jameson, the editor-in-chief of the Daily Bugle who absolutely despises Spider-Man. The procedure twists Gargan’s mind, as the Scorpion suit is permanently grafted to his body. As such, the villain repeatedly targets not only Spidey, but Jameson as well, often forcing the former to have to defend the latter, and neither party is ever happy about it.
Spider-Man and Scorpion in their classic comic style.
While the Scorpion is also featured in both of the Insomniac games, he is similarly an underdeveloped character there as well. However, he is a big part of an important moment in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 when Kraven dispatches him with ease, demonstrating the hunter’s skills and savvy, setting him up as a formidable opponent for the wall-crawler to have to deal with.
Jameson also has appeared in the Holland movies too, with J.K. Simmons reprising the role after portraying the character in the original Tobey Maguire trilogy. But Simmons’ portrayal of the raging news editor in No Way Home is a far cry from his iconic interpretation of the character in the movies from the early 2000s, acting as little more than the face of an anti-Spider-Man campaign. He has little impact in the story, even if his tirades against Spider-Man do partly motivate Peter’s decision to wipe everyone’s memory of him as the wall-crawler.
Holland and Zendaya provide excellent, well-rounded portrayals of Peter and MJ, but they’re the only Spider-Man characters in this quadrilogy of movies that I can really say that about. Marisa Tomei was an inspired choice for Aunt May, but in this iteration, the existence of Uncle Ben and his tragic death--which canonically only occurs because of a selfish decision made by Peter--is completely ignored or maybe didn’t even happen. The removal of Uncle Ben takes a tantalizing aspect of the young hero's development and his relationship with his aunt completely off the table.
Jacob Batalon’s Ned is a fun character, but has incredibly limited development compared to the likes of Harry Osborn, the traditional choice for Peter’s best friend and whose father also happens to be Spider-Man’s greatest foe. And speaking of foes, while the villains in the Holland movies have been mostly great, they are either--in the case of Mysterio--dead, or stuck in another universe. That includes Homecoming’s Vulture, who was inexplicably transported into the world of Morbius as a way to try and connect Sony’s disastrous non-Spider-Man Spider-Man movies to the Hollandverse.
The Vulture as depicted in Spider-Man: Homecoming.
For the most part, every other character of consequence that has appeared in the Holland Spider-Man movies–Tony Stark, Happy Hogan, Nick Fury, Doctor Strange–has been an imported MCU character, and no matter how well those crossovers are pulled off in Brand New Day, half of the film’s cast falls into that bucket.
In comparison, the Insomniac Spider-Man games develop a wealth of Spidey-first characters; Miles Morales, his mother Rio, Harry and Norman Osborn, Otto Octavius, Martin Li, Yuri Watanabe, Felica Hardy, Kraven the Hunter, Wilson Fisk--I could go on. And while a game has a lot more breathing room to develop characters, I would hazard to say that, for all their own faults, both the Maguire and Andrew Garfield cinematic outings at least attempted to grow Peter Parker’s inner and outer circles. When the Holland movies have the opportunity to do that, a slot that could be filled by one of Spider-Man’s own characters is instead given to an extended Marvel family member.
I’m not expecting a two-to-three-hour movie to be able to deftly juggle as large an ensemble as the Insomniac games do over their dozen plus hour campaigns. However, the effort those titles put into fleshing out Spider-Man’s world pays off in dividends for all of its characters, while also laying fertile ground for future installments to grow from. Each of the Holland movies is narrowly focused on building up Peter as a character, and plugging in other MCU heroes where it makes sense at the behest of that goal. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man might live in a friendly neighborhood, but it’s a disappointingly small one that, after four movies, should be wall crawling with a litany of the comic run’s most iconic characters.
EXCLUSIVE: Legendary’s new Monsterverse series for Apple TV has added Connie Nielsen (Gladiator, Wonder Woman) and Stana Katic (Castle, Absentia) to its expanding cast led by Wyatt Russell, who also executive produces. Character details are under wraps. Nielsen and Katic also join the previously announced Millie Brady, Pilou Asbaek, Corey Stoll, Ralph Ineson and Nyasha Hatendi. From showrunner Joby Harold, the series […]
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