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When screenwriter Zak Penn read galleys in 2011 for Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” he had a thought: “This will never get made.” The sprawling novel was wall to wall with ’80s references, everything from movies “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai,” “Batman” and “Back to the Future” to video games Halo, Minecraft, Tomb Raider, and Dungeons and Dragons.

“It was so enormous, the scope was so huge,” Penn said in a phone interview. “It would cost $250 million. This guy sucked every interest I have in my brain and put it into a book. It appealed on a visceral level, but as a job, ‘This isn’t going to happen.'”

Two years later, the writer of McU movies like “X-Men: The Last Stand” and “The Avengers” reconsidered. Penn realized that his nostalgic 2014 documentary “Atari: Game Over” — in which Cline was a subject — was perfect preparation for adapting this cinematic valentine to ’80s pop culture.

When screenwriter Zak Penn read galleys in 2011 for Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” he had a thought: “This will never get made.” The sprawling novel was wall to wall with ’80s references, everything from movies “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai,” “Batman” and “Back to the Future” to video games Halo, Minecraft, Tomb Raider, and Dungeons and Dragons.

“It was so enormous, the scope was so huge,” Penn said in a phone interview. “It would cost $250 million. This guy sucked every interest I have in my brain and put it into a book. It appealed on a visceral level, but as a job, ‘This isn’t going to happen.'”

Two years later, the writer of McU movies like “X-Men: The Last Stand” and “The Avengers” reconsidered. Penn realized that his nostalgic 2014 documentary “Atari: Game Over” — in which Cline was a subject — was perfect preparation for adapting this cinematic valentine to ’80s pop culture.

Director Steven Spielberg skipped the red carpet at Sunday’s premiere of “Ready Player One,” but surprised SXSW audiences by introducing the sci-fi adventure onstage. “This is not a film that we’ve made, this is — I promise you — a movie,” he informed the sold-out crowd at the Paramount Theatre, which gave him a long, raucous ovation. “It’s a movie that’s got to be seen on the big screen, and I’m wondering if this is a big-enough screen, because we made this with a lot of ambition to really fill the screens.”

The two-time Best Director Oscar-winner professed his love for the bestselling source material, written by Ernest Cline, who adapted his book with screenwriter Zak Penn (“X-Men: The Last Stand,” “The Incredible Hulk”). Spielberg’s goal was making a motion picture that would appeal to both video game enthusiasts and neophytes alike, although he falls in...

James Hunt Feb 14, 2018

What might the future hold for Marvel's Jessica Jones and Luke Cage? James dons his speculation hat...

Last year, Marvel's Defenders marked the culmination of a long-running plan to bring together the four main stars of the Marvel-Netflix shows (and their supporting casts) for a single crossover storyline. In in a world where those characters have met up once, audiences are primed to see team-ups occur more frequently and for those characters to play off one another, just like their big-screen cousins do.

See related Steven Spielberg's Duel: An Appreciation Top 10 Simon Pegg film and TV roles Zak Penn interview: Atari: Game Over, Ready Player One

But in a post-Defenders world, what can we expect from Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, both of whom will be starring in their second series later this year?

Jessica Jones season 2 will be the first of those series,...

Dave Vitagliano Dec 7, 2017

Astrid considers King Harald's marriage proposal, and Ivar sends the Saxons to defeat in an exciting episode of Vikings. Spoilers...

This review contains spoilers.

See related Steven Spielberg's Duel: An Appreciation Top 10 Simon Pegg film and TV roles Zak Penn interview: Atari: Game Over, Ready Player One

5.3 Homeland

“Our father would have hated you.”

Shared leadership rarely wins the war, and tonight’s episode of Vikings drives home that theme as the first of many battles finally gets underway. Though the clash between Ivar’s forces and the Christian army led by King Aethelwulf and Bishop Heahmund occupies the majority of the episode, the struggles others face offer no less compelling accounts. In the end though, it’s the fractured Lothbrok clan that continues to drive the narrative in Homeland.

In spite of the fact that their appearances are brief, Bjorn and Floki’s stories nonetheless receive vital attention.

Tony Sokol Jun 20, 2017

Dracula is returning to England. Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat are in talks to produce new series for BBC...

Sherlock creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat have detected another classic novel to sink their teeth into. Bram Stoker’s Dracula begins with a real estate deal. Jonathan Harker secures the Transylvanian count some scattered properties in Whitby, England, where he can kick off his cape and hide his native soil. Those hiding places are discovered through some stiff detective work. 127 years after the 1897 publication of the classic horror novel, the quintessential vampire will be returning to England. Moffat and Gatiss are in negotiations with the BBC to create a new Dracula miniseries.

See related Steven Spielberg's Duel: An Appreciation Top 10 Simon Pegg film and TV roles Zak Penn interview: Atari: Game Over, Ready Player One

Dracula will be the first time Moffat and Gatiss have collaborated since Sherlock aired its long awaited season 4 earlier this year. The future of Sherlock has not yet been decided. Work on the new Dracula series will begin after Moffat finishes his sixth and final season on Doctor Who.

Dracula has been adapted for stage, screen and TV many times. Stoker wrote the first theatrical version. It was first adapted to film by F. W. Murnau in Nosferatu in 1922. Bela Lugosi went from stage to screen when he starred in the 1931 Universal Studios classic. The BBC produced the TV movie Count Dracula, starring Louis Jourdan in 1977.

Gatiss is on record as a fan of the 1958 Hammer Horror version of Dracula, which starred Christopher Lee as the count and Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing. Moffat took on classic horror in 2007 when he wrote the series Jekyll. Gatiss played Dracula in a full-cast audio play from Big Finish in 2016.

There is no word on whether Dracula will be set in modern day England.

Source: Variety...

Gabriel Bergmoser Jun 20, 2017

Major spoilers in our review of Better Call Saul's season 3 finale...

This review contains spoilers.

See related Steven Spielberg's Duel: An Appreciation Top 10 Simon Pegg film and TV roles Zak Penn interview: Atari: Game Over, Ready Player One

3.10 Lantern

The big, obvious question at the heart of Better Call Saul, one baked into its premise and indeed, its title, is what made morally flexible but kind hearted Jimmy McGill transform into the ruthless, unscrupulous Saul Goodman. Of course, asking this question demands a certain familiarity with the series that preceded this one, but considering the show is named after an alter ego who has only just appeared in Better Call Saul’s primary timeline but is prominent throughout Breaking Bad it’s safe to say that familiarity can be assumed. And it’s that familiarity that has meant, from day one, there has been a Sword of Damocles hanging over Chuck McGill. From the very first episode it was speculated that Chuck would die and that his death would be part of what pushed Jimmy to become Saul. Three seasons in that very much seems to be the case, although we’ll have to wait another year to know for sure.

This season has been replete with big steps from Jimmy towards who he will inevitably become, and last week’s episode seemed like a new low as Jimmy emotionally manipulated an old woman to make himself rich. What’s curious is that so much of tonight’s episode seems to be a return from that assumed point of no return, as Jimmy sets to work making amends. Kim’s accident, an accident he feels responsible for, has thrown things into stark perspective and so Jimmy comes running back from the brink, determined to recognise his mistakes and make things better. He even tries to make peace with Chuck, only for another devastating scene of brotherly animosity to ensue. Chuck insists that Jimmy, even if his heart is in the right place, will never change, will only continue to keep hurting people. He leaves Jimmy with the horrible sentiment ‘you just don’t matter that much to me’ but rather than take this as a trigger for more moral decay or acts of spiteful revenge, Jimmy sets about trying to prove Chuck wrong. And succeeds; Kim tells him to play to his strengths and so he does, destroying his reputation in the eyes of his elderly former clients in order to right the wrong he committed last week.

Honestly, it would feel like a huge act of back peddling on the part of the writers if it wasn’t for the final scene of the episode.

What has always been fascinating about the relationship between the McGill brothers is how neither is necessarily wrong about the other. At the risk of being slightly reductive, Chuck does the right thing for the wrong reasons while Jimmy is the opposite, however, tragically, Chuck is incorrect about Jimmy in one crucial way. He can and will change; it just won’t be for the better. And furthermore, Chuck may well have given Jimmy his biggest push yet.

But to suggest that Chuck’s suicide (more on this shortly) makes Jimmy become Saul is tantamount to suggesting that Jimmy’s actions led to Chuck’s death or that he was responsible for Kim’s accident. There is a grain of truth in the thought, but as Kim says tonight ‘I’m an adult and I made a choice’. Ultimately, we can’t blame others for the choices we make. People influence us, sure, but the decision to act always rests with us. It’s just hard to imagine Jimmy seeing things that way when he learns what happened to his brother.

Which is… what, exactly? Frustratingly the episode leaves Chuck’s fate up in the air, but from a storytelling perspective it’s hard to see this as anything other than the death of the character. If Chuck lives Jimmy will feel bad, but the chance to make amends remains. That needs to be taken away for him to sink lower again, especially after tonight’s concentrated effort to redeem himself. Furthermore, the episode just feels like a swansong for the character. We get a glimpse of Chuck reading to Jimmy as a kid, by the light of a gas lamp that takes on grim significance on a second viewing, before seeing Chuck confidently working the room at Hhm, his victory assured, prior to the rug being pulled out from under him out from under him and his complete unravelling.

Chuck, ultimately, needed to win. He was never a character who could accept defeat and his apparent decision to move on from trying to destroy Jimmy after his courtroom humiliation was an enormous moment for the character. But with that choice came his determination to focus on his career and improve his health, neither of which went the way he planned. His recovery, while present, was slow, and his obsession with defeating his brother made him unreliable and unstable in the eyes of his colleagues. Last week made it clear that Chuck was bluffing when he threatened Hhm; more a sign of his desperation than anything else, and this week Howard called that bluff by paying Chuck millions out of his own pocket in order to save the company from both a volatile element and financial ruin.

For Chuck, this was a crushing blow. Not only was he unable to manoeuvre his way out of it, but the cheque was filled out and the staff gathered to farewell him before he even made his case in that boardroom. His humiliation and defeat was complete. And while Lantern did a lot to make us feel for Chuck, it is unquestionable that his own actions brought him to this moment.

In the centrepiece of the episode Chuck’s desperate façade finally crumbles as, despite shutting off all the electricity in the house, the meter just keeps going. As increasingly ominous music grows Chuck literally tears his house apart trying to remove the electricity sources that are tormenting him; a torment he now knows is not real. Finally, sweaty, desperate and worn out he seems to find the wires he is looking for only for the meter to keep going. Cue a collision of meter and baseball bat. It’s Chuck as we’ve never seen him before; in his worst moments there was always some modicum of control, a vestige of a plan he was still enacting. But all that is gone. Chuck has nothing left except the illness that provided his brother with the ammunition to destroy him, and he burned his last bridge when Jimmy came to make amends. Chuck needed control and that control was wrested away from him in increments throughout this season as every last inch of his power was eroded. Tearing his house apart in a futile attempt to make things the way he needs them to be is basically Chuck’s entire story in microcosm and its outcome, like so much on this show, is both tragic and inevitable.

Other things did happen in Lantern, although Chuck’s story does tend to dominate the thoughts as the credits roll. It’s almost easy to forget that we finally saw the (presumed) crippling of Hector Salamanca, as Nacho’s seemingly failed scheme in fact worked, in the process putting him squarely in the sights of someone who has his own reasons for wanting Hector dead. Nacho either just made an enemy or an ally, although considering he’s nowhere to be seen when Breaking Bad begins it’s hard to imagine either state of affairs will bode well for him. And while we will doubtless see Hector again, albeit in his more iconic wheelchair bound state, it will be a shame to say goodbye to this iteration of the character. Hector has been a formidable, detestable villain and it was a welcome surprise that he managed to be just as effective while active as when mute and in a wheelchair.

Meanwhile things have not fallen apart for Kim yet; neither client seems to hold her crash against her and, like Jimmy, what she went through has put things in perspective. It’s actually something of a relief to see her get the chance to relax, even if it’s a little jarring when it’s implied that she knew about Jimmy’s scheme with Mrs Landry. It doesn’t feel like the show has yet brought Kim to a place where she could be okay with what Jimmy did last week, unless I missed something and Jimmy only told her part of the truth. Whatever the case, it was a little confusing and a misstep for what has otherwise been a phenomenal season. I had expected Kim and Jimmy to break up by the end of this run, but I’m glad that wasn’t how it panned out. Kim, for now, is in one piece and probably thinking more clearly than she has in a while. Despite losing the office, we left Kim and Jimmy in a surprisingly good place at the end of this season, in both their personal situations and their relationship.

But, of course, that final scene changed the entire preceding episode and in light of that it’s hard to see Jimmy’s feint towards redemption as anything other than the last gasp of a dying conscience. A whole new set of circumstances is about to land on him, along with guilt that will almost certainly destroy the still resilient soul of Jimmy McGill.

While never quite hitting the tremendous heights of season two, this year has been another home run for Better Call Saul, advancing the plot in leaps and bounds, deepening characters, drawing the mythology closer to that of Breaking Bad and continuing to boast writing, directing and acting in the top tier of what television is offering right now. For my money we’re well past the point where Better Call Saul has anything to prove when it comes to comparisons to its predecessor, and yet it keeps proving its quality and then some. At the time of writing season four is yet to be confirmed, but it’s difficult to imagine a world where this is the end of the story. There’s just still so much left to explore, develop, and conclude.

Assuming the next chapter arrives in a year, a year is once again seeming like a very long wait. Thanks as always for reading along; getting to examine and analyse this phenomenal show is something it’s hard not to feel very lucky about.

See you next year. Hopefully.

Read Gabriel's review of the previous episode, Fall, here.

Kayti Burt May 16, 2017

This week's Gotham digs deep into its established relationships to really make viewers care about the course of events...

This review contains spoilers.

See related Steven Spielberg's Duel: An Appreciation Top 10 Simon Pegg film and TV roles Zak Penn interview: Atari: Game Over, Ready Player One

3.18 Light The Wick

Bringing in the Court of Owls has been a strike of genius for Gotham this season. By giving both our favourite heroes and our favourite villains a common antagonist in Kathryn and her Court, they are allowed to work together and interact in a way we have never quite seen from this show. Surely, it cannot last, but, for now, the boundaries between the protagonists and antagonists of Gotham have never felt more permeable and I love it.

As with the Scarecrow in Batman Begins, the Court has a plan to expose the dark side of...

Matthew Byrd May 16, 2017

The sorely underrated Alan Wake was originally supposed to be a much bigger, open-world game, a new story suggests...

Last week, it was announced that Alan Wake will be removed from digital retailers due to the game's expiring music rights. This makes Alan Wake one of the most successful games to be yanked from digital retail outlets due to licensing issues.

See related Steven Spielberg's Duel: An Appreciation Top 10 Simon Pegg film and TV roles Zak Penn interview: Atari: Game Over, Ready Player One

Of course, this isn't the only hardship that Alan Wake has faced since the project's inception. In fact, the version of Alan Wake that you can no longer buy via Steam and other online outlets isn't even the version of the game that Remedy initially intended to release.

A new article by Games Radar summarises the history of Alan Wake's development...

Wil Jones Sep 7, 2016

Movies based on videogames tend to be awful. But documentaries about games? They're sometimes brilliant...

Hollywood has always has an awkward relationship with videogames. Studios are scared of them because they’re a threat, and something else for teenagers to spend money on instead of big summer movies. But on the other hand, there’s a lot of money in games, and Hollywood wants some of that — but they’ve never properly worked out how. Ever since 1993’s Super Mario Bros, there has been a steady stream of movies based on videogame properties, and their guaranteed awfulness has become a running joke. And while that’s slightly unfair on a few films (Raul Julia totally makes Street Fighter worthwhile), it’s not without reason.

And even when they’re not based on an actual title, attempts to make movies more broadly also tend to be terrible. The Last Starfighter,...

Kirsten Howard Dec 7, 2017

You can watch the trailer for the very last episode of Mr Robot's new season right here...

Hello, friend. One of our most favourite shows is back for a third season - ratings be damned - and its award-winning star Rami Malek is also back on fine form as beleaguered hacker extraordinaire Elliot Alderson.

See related Steven Spielberg's Duel: An Appreciation Top 10 Simon Pegg film and TV roles Zak Penn interview: Atari: Game Over, Ready Player One

New episodes of Mr Robot are now streaming weekly on Amazon, and if you're all caught up you might want a little glimpse ahead at what's coming next.

Here's the trailer for episode 10, entitled 'eps3.9_shutdown-r'...

And here's the (as always, very brief) synopsis...

Elliot tries to save Darlene, but things don't go as planned; Mr. Robot needs to step up or step back; and Angela considers the price.

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Star Wars: Episode VIII sends Ready Player One scurrying into 2018...

This one isn't a massive surprise, really. Disney recently shifted the release date of Star Wars: Episode VIII from May 2017 to December 15th 2017 instead. That date had already been earmarked by Warner Bros for the release of Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Ready Player One. And, after due consideration, Warner Bros has now moved its film into 2018.

Based on Ernest Cline's novel, the mix of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and classic videogames (although that's a description that still manages to sell the book short a little) will now head to cinemas on March 30th 2018 instead. In the Us, that means it goes head to head now with Universal's planned remake of The Wolf Man. That too may move, though.

As of now, Olivia Cooke and Ben Mendelsohn are on board the cast of Ready Player One.

Featuring: Jay Bartlett, Billy Mitchell, Walter Day, Patrick Scott Patterson, Warren Davis, Tommy Tallaric | Written by Robert McCallum, Jordan Christopher Morris | Directed by Robert McCallum

Confession time. Between working a full time job and keeping Nerdly going, I don’t have a lot of downtime. Working all day and well into the night also means I also often struggle to unwind at bedtime. But a few years ago I found a solution for that, YouTube. Whereas a lot of people will read a book in bed for going to sleep, I watch videos. In particular the myriad of retro gamers on YouTube making videos about their collections, their game hunts and their general all-round love for old-school gaming. I’ve even made some videos of that nature myself.

Over the years there has been an explosion of well-produced YouTube “shows” that rival Us reality television in terms of editing, production and quality.

BBC’s The Gamechangers didn’t exactly do its GTA subject matter justice. Ryan explains why we need a great movie about game design...

There’s a moment in the BBC’s drama The Gamechangers where Sam Houser, the co-founder of Grand Theft Auto studio Rockstar North, says to one of his minions, “We need to make our own game engine.”

In the very next scene, the game engine’s finished and demonstrated to Jamie, another Rockstar co-founder. To the casual observer, it might seem as though the process of making a game engine is as simple as ordering a pizza.

It’s an example of the 90-minute show’s clumsy handling of its subject matter: the videogame phenomenon Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, its social impact and its controversy. This was the kind of drama that felt the need to carefully explain some things in painfully literal terms -...

Copies of Atari's infamous E.T., plus other Atari games dug up from a New Mexico landfill, have fetched $100,000 at auction...

Earlier this year, Zak Penn's documentary Atari: Game Over charted the rise and fall of what was once briefly the biggest videogame company in the world. More specifically, it also dug into a one of the great myths of the nascent medium: that tie-in videogame E.T: The Extra-Terrestrial was so badly-received, and sold so poorly, that Atari was forced to bury millions of unwanted cartridges in the New Mexico desert.

Incredibly, the legend turned out to be true. The documentary captured the moment when, as dozens of curious onlookers gathered, a group of diggers led by Joe Lewandowski uncovered the first few E.T. cartridges at the Alamogordo landfill. As well as E.T., many other Atari 2600 games were discovered too, including copies of Asteroids, Defender, Missile Command and Centipede.

In recent years there has been a real boom in documentaries surrounding popular culture. Films such as Electric Boogaloo, Video Nasties, The Search for Weng Weng and Adjust Your Tracking have captured the zeitgeist of fans across the globe, and in turn inspired more people to create their own documentaries about pop culture subjects that matter to them…

But not all these documentaries see the same success. Having been on something of a documentary kick lately, I thought I’d break down the ten of the best little-known, or better yet little-discussed, pop-culture documentaries from the many, many examples I have been watching. So here they are and, for once, they’re in order:

1) Slaughter Nick For President

There’s a good reason this film is at the top of my list. This is the documentary that kicked off my exploration of pop culture documentaries (eventually ending up at compliling this list) and,...

Could Gene Wilder be coaxed out of retirement for a new Steven Spielberg movie?

Rumour of the day? Well, it's not a bad one. It was confirmed last week that Steven Spielberg is pressing ahead with directing the film of Ernest Cline's book, Ready Player One. Furthermore, Warner Bros and DreamWorks have scheduled the film for a 2017 release.

It's now being reported that the director is trying to persuade actor Gene Wilder to come out of retirement to play a role in one of his upcoming movies. And Ready Player One may be the project concerned, with the idea presumably being that Wilder would take on the role of James Halliday, the creator of the story's virtual universe.

Either that, or Spielberg wants him to voice The Bfg in his upcoming adaptation of Roald Dahl's book of the same name.

The source of the rumour is Ain't It Cool News,...

Steven Spielberg's adaptation of the book Ready Player One has a release date! Come check out the details after the jump.

The film set to be directed by Steven Spielberg and released by WB, Village Roadshow Pictures, and Dreamworks is set to release on December 15, 2017.

The latest script has been written by Zach Penn (X-Men). Ernest Cline, the writer of the book, had worked with Penn before thanks to the movie Atari: Game Over.

“Any film from Steven Spielberg is an event film, so it felt right to date this thrilling new project from one of our greatest filmmakers for the holiday season," said Dan Fellman

The last time Spielberg worked with WB he released A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Spielberg is also working with Microsoft to create a Halo TV Series that has been rather quiet for over a year, but is still in development.

There are no casting details...

The big screen take on Ernest Cline's Ready Player One now has a release date...

Steven Spielberg's latest clutch of projects as director kicks off with this autumn's Bridge Of Spies, reuniting him with Tom Hanks. He's already shot The Bfg, which is set for release in the summer of 2016. And now? He's lined up his next directorial outing after that as well.

Confirming earlier rumours, Spielberg is set to direct the movie of Ernest Cline's really rather nerdy book, Ready Player One. It's a really fun book if you've not had the chance, with particular appeal to those who lost hours of their lives (and maybe continue to do so) to the videogames of the 1980s.

The movie is set to be a co-production between Warner Bros, Village Roadshow Pictures and DreamWorks, and a release date has now been confirmed for the movie as well. We'll...