There's reportedly another casualty in Warner Bros. Discovery's restructuring of the DC Universe, as filmmaker Kevin Smith said the Strange Adventures animated series is not moving forward.

According to Smith on his Hollywood Babble-On podcast (via THR), Strange Adventures is the next project to hit the cutting room floor as a result of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

“Strange Adventures being a casualty kind of made sense to me, I'm like, nobody necessarily knows these characters, and it sounded like an expensive show,” Smith said on the podcast.

WarnerMedia first announced Strange Adventures back in 2019. The show was intended to be an anthology series produced by Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, and John Stephens. Stephens was also set to serve as writer and showrunner. At the time, the show was described as, "An anthology series of cautionary tales set in a world where superpowers exist".

Smith said the show would focus on characters other than Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and other DC characters everybody knows. For example, in an episode Smith wrote, he said he picked Jimmy Olsen and Bizarro to focus on.

According to Smith, the actor they were pursuing to play Bizarro in this story was Nicolas Cage, but the talks never progressed prior to production coming to a halt. The show was announced alongside a Green Lantern series, which according to THR, is still on track for HBO Max.

In the same podcast, Smith also spoke out about Warner Bros. Discovery's sudden cancellation of the Batgirl movie, calling the move "an incredibly bad look."

Beyond Batgirl and now Strange Adventures, a handful of other DC projects have been impacted by the Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Other affected movies and series include Season 9 of The Flash, The Wonder Twins, The Supergirl movie, and more.

To read up on the whole situation, check out our report on The Batgirl cancellation, the social media fallout, and more.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

A group of talented Better Call Saul fans have created an impressive video imagining what the television series may look like if it were adapted into a Nintendo Game Boy game.

Created by artist Lumpy Touch, along with 2bitcrook and branflakes, the video showcases the title screen, character select, and some gameplay from this hypothetical game. You can check out the intro of the project below, or take a full look at the video on YouTube.

Better Call Saul Gameboy'd
full video link below pic.twitter.com/Drf4d2ozpa

— Lumpy (@LumpyTouch) August 6, 2022

The imaginary game has three playable characters: Jimmy, Kim, and Mike. The creators even assigned different statistics to each character, including Guts, Hustle, Authority, and Lawyer. Following the character select is a cutscene, complete with warbled 8-bit voices.

The level shown involves running through the desert, stomping on scorpions and collecting money. The video also recreates Mike's sniping abilities and Jimmy and Howard's boxing match from the show.

The music used in the video is sampled from a number of Game Boy and NES games, including Turok, Castlevania the Adventure, Trip World, and more. There's also a Game Boy-ified version of the Better Call Saul theme used in the video.

Better Call Saul is in the middle of its sixth and final season right now. In last week's episode, the show finally gave us the long-awaited cameos from Breaking Bad's Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul. Speaking of Cranston and Paul, the two actors were just in Albuquerque to celebrate the unveiling of Walter White and Jesse Pinkman statues.

For more on Better Call Saul, check out our article about what Better Call Saul gets right about prequels that most franchises get wrong.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

Cobra Kai will return on September 9, 2022, with the debut of Season 5. The upcoming season of the hit Netflix martial arts drama Cobra Kai will also see the return of Karate Kid 3 villain, Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan).

That’s right – the sadistic karate-based villain who Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) hired to terrorize Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is back… and judging from these 10 newly-released images, he’s going to be putting up a fight once more.

Of course, this makes a lot of sense. At the end of Cobra Kai Season 4, we saw Silver wrestle control of Cobra Kai from his former friend, John Kreese (Martin Kove) who he also framed for murder… and it looks as though he’s brought in some backup to keep Daniel and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) in line.

Season 5 comes several months earlier than expected – the show usually debuts around New Year.

And honestly, it can’t come soon enough. Season 4 was a thrilling continuation of the Cobra Kai story with Daniel and Johnny finally putting their differences aside, and it looks as though they’ll need to rely on each other even more in Season 5.

Unfortunately, we still don’t know how Barnes is going to make his entrance into Cobra Kai… but it looks as though he hasn’t stopped training. But these new images do give us a glimpse of the Cobra Kai dojo, which seems to have been given more than a lick of paint by Sensei Silver.

Not to mention, the return of some of our favorites including Miguel Diaz (Xolo Maridueña), Hawk (Jacob Bertrand), and even Robby (Tanner Buchanan).

IGN’s review of Cobra Kai Season 4 said that “the heart and soul of what makes the series what it is, is still present. A different kind of hokeyness is evident in Season 4, but it’s met by more complex emotional journeys and unexpected team-ups that will leave fans counting down the days until Season 5.”

Want to read more about Cobra Kai? Check out how the Cobra Kai creators want the show to continue past Season 5 as well as which Cobra Kai characters you can suit up as in Fortnite.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

Jurassic World: Dominion is already a hefty 2 hours and 26 minutes, but a new extended release will bring the total runtime up to a whopping 2 hours and 40 minutes. Universal has announced that the Blu-ray and 4K UHD physical release, as well as a new digital version, will come with 14 extra minutes of previously unreleased footage.

The new release, titled Jurassic World Dominion Extended Edition, is launching next week on August 16. The 14 extra minutes of content is made up of an alternate opening and even more dinosaurs.

In addition to the extra content, the physical release also includes behind-the-scenes footage and an original short film called Battle at Big Rock. The short film is directed by Colin Trevorrow, and it takes place one year after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom at Big Rock National Park.

Jurassic World: Dominion is the conclusion to the Jurassic saga, which spans six films dating back to the original Jurassic Park. We called the film 'good' in our review, saying, "it manages to introduce an impressive marriage between ever-present nostalgia and the constantly evolving challenges of having prehistoric creatures roaming free in our world."

For more, check out our opinion piece on why the Jurassic Park sequels should embrace their stupidity. Or, check out our breakdown of Jurassic World Dominion's Easter eggs and ending explained.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

You'll soon be able to cook over 150 chili recipes recommended by The Office's Kevin Malone... Just make sure not to spill it all over the floor.

Available for preorder now on Amazon, the new Seriously Good Chili cookbook has 177 chili recipes hand-picked by Brian Baumgartner, the actor who played Kevin Malone on NBC's The Office. On Instagram, Baumgartner posted a video of him unboxing the cookbook, saying it will be available this September.

As for the recipes themselves, they come from famous chefs, food bloggers, and celebrities. The book also includes a foreword written by The Office's Oscar Nunez, and a behind-the-scenes look at the iconic chili scene from The Office.

Kevin's famous chili appears in Season 5, Episode 26's cold open, when Kevin is very excited about his annual tradition of bringing a pot of his famous chili to the office. The character even proclaims, "It's probably the thing I do best." The cold open ends with Kevin dropping the pot and spilling chili all over the floor of the office, in a scene you've probably seen countless times on social media.

Earlier this year, a Peacock subscriber discovered that the streaming service hid Kevin's famous chili recipe within Peacock's terms of service. So, you can recreate the entire original recipe without the new cookbook.

For more on The Office, check out how NBC may be standing by for a reboot of The Office. And, Office superfans should check out the official The Office LEGO set.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

An anime adaptation of popular manga Dungeon Meshi / Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoku Kui has been announced, with an official website and Twitter account.

The new series will adapt the story of the Manga, where an RPG-style party of dungeon-crawling adventurers try to make their latest trip as cheap and efficient as possible, forgoing supplies and doing their best to make the monsters they fight into edible treats. The series also offers in-depth recipes for each of the opponents the characters encounter.

A broadcast date for the anime has not yet been announced, but there’s a beautiful piece of art showing the main characters huddled around a meal, being stalked by monsters in the darkness.

The anime will be produced by the renowned Studio Trigger, known for Kill la Kill, Promare, and the upcoming Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

Previously, Studio Trigger produced an anime-style commercial for the 8th volume of the manga, which led to a massive amount of interest from fans in seeing them make a full adaptation. It may give us a sense of what the anime could look like, and you can watch it in the tweet below:

It's not surprising to see that Studio TRIGGER has been left in charge of Dungeon Meshi's animation production. After all they were assigned the task of making a promotional CM for the titular series a few years ago, which miraculously comes full circle. pic.twitter.com/VL5d4jccg3

— Baleygr (CEO of 86 EIGHTY-SIX) (@Baleygr086) August 9, 2022

Dungeon Meshi began in February of 2014 and by August 2017 the first 4 volumes saw over 2 million copies in print. It was rated number one for male readers in 2016’s This Manga Is Amazing’s rankings, the result of 400 manga professionals voting on their favorites.

Mat Jones is IGN's UK Social Coordinator, and will turn back into a pumpkin at midnight.

The key thing to know about Gotham Knights’ factions is that they aren’t just henchmen for a named villain. The gangs of enemies you’ll find across Gotham’s darkened streets are sorted into affiliations – with their own preferences of street crime and equipment – but they’re mercenaries, not cultists.

Take our subjects for today: the Regulators faction, and classic supervillain Mr. Freeze. The Regulators are an existing gang in this version of Gotham, a group of tech-enhanced ne’er-do-wells who steal advanced goods, traffic organs and augment their own power with their ill-gotten gains. You can meet them doing their own thing as you clean up the streets – but you can also find them allied with Mr. Freeze, and adopting his penchant for ice-enhanced elemental attacks as a result. In effect, Freeze hires the Regulators for portions of his storyline, they don’t just flock to his cause.

It led to a very interesting design challenge for Gotham Knights’ art team – how do you design a villain and a gang that feel like they could work together, but don’t necessarily always do so?

Interestingly, that process was more organic than forced. The team knew they wanted to include the iconic Freeze, but his association with a gang came later. At first, it was all about building a villain who felt recognisable, without feeling overly familiar.

“When we get a villain like Mr. Freeze, I mean the guy's got so much history, it's a challenge for our team when we get it,” explains character art director, Jay Evans. “It's, ‘Where do we go from here?’ Because we look at all the past [versions of the character] that have been done really well. For us, the kind of jumping off point was where does he fit in our Gotham City, on a technological kind of level? So he is the most advanced technology piece in our Gotham.”

That’s not to say this version of Freeze is a pure sci-fi fantasy. The key for the design team was in creating someone whose advanced technology was still rooted in reality.

“A lot of our reference was medical equipment,” says Evans. “Molded, cool, almost sci-fi shapes with part lines and product design influences. But then, he's still understandable. There's still mechanical connections. It's still relatable. It's not just sci-fi blobs where you have to use your imagination.”

Brilliantly, to help build advanced tech that felt in some way realistic, the art team… used some advanced tech to help make that happen.

“We started experimenting quite early on with using VR in our concept art pipeline,” says Evans. “What makes it awesome is when you're designing a weapon or a piece of a character, just having that there in real life floating in front of you at the correct scale, it just really helps the artists. [...] Then exporting that rough mesh, exporting that into a game engine right away. It seemed like a really natural, quick pipeline. And we used it on Mr. Freeze.”

“VR just [adds] that tangibility,” adds Wu. “If you [have a gauntlet in front of you], you feel like you can wear it right here, right now. And then you can see all those different perspectives right away in real time. That's very useful.”

Using VR helped the team get a sense of not just how Mr. Freeze looks as piece of design, but how he’d feel to be close to in an interactive space, helping them build a tangible new version of an iconic character. But of course, you can only push a known supervillain so far, and the team made sure early on to identify what it is that makes Freeze immediately identifiable to even a casual comic book fan:

“The dome, the goggles, his face,” explains associate character art director, Jianli Wu. “The lore of Mr. Freeze is iconic. We don't want to deviate from that, because everyone, when they see that, they know it’s Mr Freeze. But we elevated the tech level a little bit, and we want to bring our own flavor into his design. We want to be faithful to the IP and, but at the same time, we want to bring something new to the table. So that's kind of the philosophy we have for a lot of the characters in the game, from the player-characters to someone like Mr. Freeze.”

The Regulators, on the other hand, are a brand new addition to the universe. While there have been a couple of DC supervillains called The Regulator over the years, the Gotham Knights faction doesn’t appear to be associated with them. Initially, they weren’t even created to be associated with Mr. Freeze, either.

“Our approach was to design the factions as standalone factions first,” explains Evans. “The Regulators in our fiction are the fantasy of these hackers, safe crackers, various other tech-related criminals. And what makes them unique is they have this ‘found technology’ layer to them. So the Regulators are grabbing technology from the most futuristic or the most advanced places in Gotham – maybe it's STAR Labs or something.

“And then they're building their weapons and their equipment, and it's all visible on the outside of them. So on the base layer, we have this kind of contemporary, almost athletic wear with bright colors. But then on top, we have this tech layer. On the base units, it's smaller elements, [but] on some of the more advanced archetypes, it can be things like a completely augmented arm that has a upgraded weapon.”

In the gallery above, you can see that advancement in action, a visual representation of how the game increases enemy strength alongside you. Enemy goons can range from Base, to Veteran, to Champion, to Named Champion difficulties, and in the case of a Regulator, you can see how much more of that pilfered tech they’re applying to themselves as they increase in importance to the gang.

Regulators can be Brawlers, Shooters, Snipers, Shockers, and Dronemasters, all of whom use their tech in different ways to try and take the Knights down. It was only when that faction philosophy was established that the team realized they’d created the perfect mercenary force for their power-suited take on Victor Fries – but that also created a little more work.

“We linked up the Regulators with Mr. Freeze,” says Evans. “It seemed like a natural fit, based on their technology levels, where they fit artistically and in their writing, stuff like that.”

“I remember at some point we went through the Regulators all over again,” continues Wu, “because it would fit with Mr. Freeze a little bit better. So yeah, I think that's just one of those things that's inevitable at certain parts of the project.”

After that redesign, things truly came together. The Regulators can be found all over Gotham under normal circumstances, but you’ll stumble on Freeze-aligned pockets of them, too, presumably working under the supervillain’s direction. Later in Freeze’s optional villain arc, it will seemingly be the Regulators that help him to ice over the top of Elliot Centre for a boss battle (which we saw in some 2020 footage of the game).

They make for a natural team, but one that feels more rooted in business than devotion – a part of Gotham Knights’ more grounded take on the legendary comic book city. We’ll be talking more about that very soon in our month of IGN First coverage, but if you want to learn more right now, we have the first 16 minutes of the game to watch, and a reveal of 28 unlockable superhero suits, and how they were designed.

Joe Skrebels is IGN's Executive Editor of News. Follow him on Twitter. Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@ign.com.

Severance co-creator Ben Stiller has no idea how many people have watched the show, and thinks that's "really weird".

During an interview with Decider, the 56-year-old filmmaker revealed that, much like the fictional macrodata in Severance, he has no idea what Apple’s numbers really mean.

“No, it’s hard,” he said, when asked if Apple provided him with concrete viewing figures for his show. “They don’t tell you the numbers. It’s really weird. So, you get these graphs and charts, like I said, that have like peaks and valleys. But you don’t know what the baseline is. I guess [it] could be like, based on 100 people or could be like, 200 million people. We don’t know.”

Severance made waves when Season 1 hit Apple TV+ earlier this year – a workplace drama that puts a sinister high-tech twist on the notion of work/life balance. The show follows a group of “severed” employees who have undergone a medical procedure to separate their work and home life memories… and explores how this procedure affects them both in and outside of the office.

But while it’s seen rave reviews and a buzz of discussion online, it seems that nobody, including creator Ben Stiller, has any idea how well it performed. Apple doesn't provide viewing figures to consumers, press, or it seems even the shows' creators.

“They basically say, ‘Yeah, this is doing well,’” he said. “You’re trying to interpret what they’re saying. But they’re straightforward. It’s just that’s how, I guess, all the streamers do it. How do you find out? I’m curious how you find out.”

“The fun thing was going to [San Diego] Comic-Con and having a full house for a panel and seeing all those people there,” he added. “That was the first time I was like, ‘Oh, wow, this is really like… There are people who are really watching this, like human beings to connect with on it.’”

Severance has already been renewed for a second season and has entered the cultural landscape as one of 2022’s most talked about new shows.

“And that’s what I felt was really fortunate about the show,” said Stiller. “Maybe also the timing of when we came out in terms of how people are approaching our work and those questions. The fact that it’s in the conversation, just culturally, it’s really been fun to be a part of.”

There may be no escape in Severance, but there’s no indication what the numbers mean, either. Both in and outside of the show, the data remains inscrutable… and that feels kinda appropriate, really.

Want to find out more about Severance? Check out our review of Severance Season 1 as well as our dive into the show’s season finale.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

New platform fighter MultiVersus has seemingly passed 10 million players in just three weeks – and before it's even left beta.

According to tracker.gg (via PC Gamer) the game has hit a colossal 10,268,259 active accounts across all platforms since it headed to open beta three weeks ago.

While this isn't an official announcement, tracker.gg ingests data directly from games, so it would seem to be accurate. We've contacted Warner Bros. for confirmation.

The new game from Warner Bros. features iconic characters such as Batman, Bugs Bunny, and Shaggy and Velma from Scooby Doo, and it seems as though these classic Warner Bros. characters have tapped into gamers in a big way.

MultiVersus has proved to be a surprise hit with an absolutely huge beta launch seeing a vast number of players flocking to the quirky new fighting game. I get the feeling it’s going to get even bigger, too. Season 1 brings with it a new character – Morty from the hit animated show, Rick & Morty.

While Season 1 details have been coming in thick and fast, it looks as though MultiVersus players will have a bit of a wait before they get their hands on their new playable character. The game’s first season (and official launch) has been delayed with no official date announced.

However, MultiVersus developers are keen to point out that the delays are absolutely nothing to do with the Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

IGN’s MultiVersus review called the game “a raucous and fun competitive platform fighter that rewards players for learning the strengths and weaknesses of its eclectic cast of characters and working as part of a team. Its focus on online 2v2 means it lacks the pick-up-and-play nature of a game like Smash Bros., but it also does a nice job of setting it apart from other games in the genre. MultiVersus may need time to grow its currently limited selection of stages and characters to meet its bright potential, but its foundations are already rock solid.”

Where the game goes from here remains to be seen, but it’s certainly off to a tremendous start. 10 million players certainly can’t be wrong.

Want to find out more about MultiVersus? Check out our character guide for a full list of playable characters, as well as our tips and tricks to get the most out of your match-ups.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

The latest Elden Ring update has added some interesting changes to summoning signs.

Update 1.06 has made summoning signs more useful, adding “the function to send summoning signs to summoning pools in multiple areas, including distant areas.”

Essentially, this means you’ll have more of a chance of being summoned to another player’s game while going about your business in The Lands Between. You won’t even have to stay near your sign anymore and can continue exploring while you wait for a summon.

Unfortunately, when sending a summoning sign to a “distant area” the summoning pools in Mohgwyn’s Palace are excluded. While no reasoning is given for that single exclusion, it may be because this area is commonly used to farm Runes and level up faster than you normally could.

There’s also a change to invasions, allowing players to invade a larger area, “including distant areas.”

Oh, and if you’ve been having trouble with White Mask Varre’s questline, there’s a new way to advance it by killing a newly-added NPC. This is because the means of completing Varre's quest required players to go online - this offers an offline option. The patch notes don’t explicitly explain where the NPC you’ll need to kill will be, so you might have to work that one out.

Elden Ring’s multiplayer mechanics have been a highlight since the game launched, and with this new update, you’ll find it even easier to join others or go to-to-toe with other Tarnished.

As well as this update to summoning signs and pools, there are also a ton of balance changes and bug fixes, notably reducing the time before you can roll after a Greatsword, Curved Greatsword, or Great Hammer attack. The motion speed of strong and charged attacks has also been increased for those weapons. There are over 30 bug fixes included, with full patch notes found here.

IGN’s Elden Ring review called the game a “masterpiece” praising the game as “FromSoftware’s largest and most ambitious game yet”.

“Elden Ring is a massive iteration on what FromSoftware began with the Souls series, bringing its relentlessly challenging combat to an incredible open world that gives us the freedom to choose our own path,” it reads, as well as PVP and co-operative play that our critic was barely “able to scratch the surface of.”

Having trouble with Elden Ring PVP and co-op? Find out how to level up quickly in Elden Ring as well as how to access co-op and invasions.

Ryan Leston is an entertainment journalist and film critic for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.