Star Wars Director of Photography Shares Set Photos
Star Wars: The Force Awakens director of photography Daniel Mindel has been sharing photos from the movie's set throughout the past couple weeks.
The photos posted on his personal Instagram give us an intimate view into the making of the film, from Adam Driver and John Boyega battling with lightsabers, to Peter Mayhew's Chewbacca hanging out on set. The photo of Driver and Boyega's confrontation on the snowy set is a particularly cool reminder that the film used practical effects instead of creating the lightsaber glow in CGI. Check out some of the photos below.
Garry’s Mod Hits Massive Lifetime Sales Landmark
Garry's Mod, a popular standalone sandbox title on Steam, hit its ten-millionth copy sold over New Year's 2015.
This comes from creator Garry Newman's Twitter, where he announced the landmark sale.
Jesus christ. GMod sold its ten millionth copy over new years.
— Garry Newman (@garrynewman) January 2, 2016
Garry's Mod, sometimes known as GMod, was originally a mod for Half-Life 2. In 2006, Newman formed Facepunch Studios and released the standalone Garry's Mod, as well as last year's Rust. GMod allows players to toy with the Source engine in a number of ways, from playing games of hide-and-go-seek as inanimate objects to recreating full movie trailers.
Killer Instinct Adding Series’ Vet Tusk to Season 3 Roster
Killer Instinct: Season 3’s roster is set and fans can expect returning characters and more guests.
Speaking in an interview on Twitch (via Shoryuken), Microsoft Studios creative director Adam Isgreen confirmed the barbarian with a sword Tusk in Season 3. The character first appeared in 1996’s Killer Instinct 2.
Tusk joins Kim Wu and Battletoad’s Rash in Killer Instinct: Season 3’s roster, which will include at least one more guest character, according to Isgreen.
Steam Surpasses 12 Million Concurrent Users
Looks like Steam's Christmas blunder hasn't had any effect on the client's usage. This weekend, Steam reached over 12 million concurrent users—exactly 12,330,445 at the time of writing.
The eight-figure number was hit just before noon (EST) on Sunday and continued to rise from there. The top two games being played are, unsurprisingly, Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Fallout 4, Grand Theft Auto V, and Football Manager 2016 follow after a gap in the hundreds of thousands.
Steam's Winter Sale—which ends January 4—probably plays a part in the record-breaking user count. Adding intrigue to the sale, Valve is running a mysterious alternate-reality game on Steam with lots of internet detectives are on the case.
Ash vs Evil Dead, Fargo, Rock’s WrestleMania Plans
Hey guys, Eric and Matt here with either the final Channel Surfing of 2015 (if you go by when we recorded it) or the first Channel Surfing of 2016 (if you go by when we posted it). You choose!
In this big, 90 minute+ installment, we cover some end of the year TV news before going into three spoiler-packed chats on the just-completed seasons of Ash vs Evil Dead and Fargo and then on a movie (whaaaaaat?) some of you may have heard of called Star Wars: The Force Awakens. To guide you though the various spoiler conversations, in case you want/need to skip any, check out the time code below!
5:30-8:00: The state of DC Comics on the CW8:00-14:30: The Rock revealing he’ll be a part of WrestleMania 32
The Force Awakens Beat Titanic at the Box Office
Star Wars: The Force Awakens has surpassed Titanic to become the second-highest grossing domestic film of all-time.
Box Office Mojo, which reports box office totals for the majority of films across the globe, currently places the recently released film at over $686 million in the US, though weekend projections have it with $740 million by the end of Sunday. This should put it within striking distance of James Cameron's other goliath, Avatar, which topped out at just over $760 million.
The Force Awakens already became the highest grossing Disney film ever, passing 2012's The Avengers in late December.
Super Famicom Box Art Book Gets Collector’s Edition
Bitmap Book's Super Famicom: The Box Art Collection went up for pre-sale today, offering a special collector's edition that is only available before its official release. The book is a compilation of Super Famicom's Japanese game packaging, "professionally shot and presented as a glorious hardback edition."
Bound in "charcoal grey wibalin with a gold foil block logo and lithographically printed," the regular hardback book will cost around $40 USD, with the collector's edition coming in a little over $70 USD. The collector's edition features artwork by Wil Overton—former lead concept artist at Rare—and comes enclosed in an "oversized Super Famicom style game box."
Overton's cover art will also be sold as a poster, with 50 signed by the artist himself. These won't come with the collector's edition, but can be bought separately on the Bitmap Books website.
Star Citizen Focusing on VR in 2016
Virtual reality support for Star Citizen will "get up to speed" in early 2016, says CEO Chris Roberts.
In a December livestream by Roberts Space Industries—and transcribed on RoadtoVR—Roberts says that the goal is to have VR support for all major VR headsets.
The development team has been focusing heavily on releasing Alpha 2.0, leaving VR implementation in the background. According to RoadtoVR, some parts of Star Citizen do have support for the Rift DK1, but the game has not caught up to more recent developments in VR technology.
"It’s a little more complicated because we’ve changed the engine so much," Roberts says. "We’ve changed the rendering pipeline to enable us to do a lot of things that we need to do so it’s not very easy."
Disney Infinity Now Most Popular Toys-to-Life Series
Catapulted by both anticipation and Star Wars: The Force Awakens' release in December, Disney Infinity Star Wars games and toys have raked in over $200 million in sales this fall.
Thanks to revenue from the Disney Infinity: 3.0 The Force Awakens play set, released on the same day as the film, the franchise has now passed both Skylanders and LEGO Dimensions in the toys-to-life category, according to Fortune. In December, John Vignocchi, VP of production at Disney Interactive Studios, confirmed the game's number-one ranking in the genre.
SuperData Research CEO Joost van Dreunen said the positive reception to The Force Awakens helped sales for Disney Infinity, stating that because Star Wars is one the most recognizable franchises "it allows Disney to demand a higher minimum guarantee as part of the various licensing agreements."
Midseason TV Preview
With 2015 now in our rear view, it's time to settle in for a whole new slate of new and returning TV shows. A massive amount (is there any other kind of 'amount' these days?) ranging from huge properties like Game of Thrones and Marvel's Daredevil to the miraculous return of FOX's The X-Files.
The Walking Dead, Agents of SHIELD, Gotham, Empire, Once Upon a Time, and more come back from their multi-month winter hibernations while new shows like Colony, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Billions, Hap and Leonard, Shadowhunters, and The Shannara Chronicles make their debuts. All while Mythbusters, American Idol, and Banshee air their final seasons.
Midseason also means the return of Better Call Saul, The Americans, Always Sunny, The 100, Black Sails, Vikings, Shameless, and Marvel's Agent Carter. Plus, on the wrestling front, Lucha Underground is back for a second season while TNA's Impact Wrestling and WWE's Smackdown both change networks (and nights).