Nicolas Cage is set to play the iconic vampire Dracula in Universal’s upcoming monster movie, Renfield.

The film stars Nicholas Hoult as Dracula’s notorious lackey, R.M. Renfield, who appeared alongside the Count in Bram Stoker’s original novel. The film will follow his exploits as the unhinged henchman and former asylum dweller.

But while the film is said to be set in the present day, little else is known about Renfield.

It is understood that Renfield will be an origin story of sorts, so it’s likely we encounter the title character during his time as an inmate of an insane asylum not far from Dracula’s first English home, Carfax. Renfield is set to be directed by Chris McKay, based on an original story outline from Robert Kirkman with a script by Ryan Ridley.

During the original novel, R.M. Renfield is thought to be suffering from delusions, but it’s later discovered that he’s actually under the influence of the legendary vampire himself, Count Dracula. However, details remain scarce (with nothing said of the upcoming film’s plot) and it’s currently unknown whether his psychologist, Dr. John Seward, has been cast in the movie, or whether he will appear at all.

It’s good news for Nic Cage fans though as the eccentric actor bags the literary role of a lifetime.

Nicolas Cage has seen something of a resurgence of late, with rave reviews for his recent starring role in Pig. He will next take to the big screen as himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – the upcoming action-comedy flick from director Tom Gormican.

Renfield also marks a return to major studios for Cage, whose last big studio flick was Ghost Rider: The Spirit of Vengeance in 2011. Since then, he’s starred primarily in quirky and often downright weird indie films.

Meanwhile, it looks as though Universal is continuing to grow its Monsters franchise, with an upcoming remake of The Wolfman following the successful reimagining of The Invisible Man.

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

Nicolas Cage is set to play the iconic vampire Dracula in Universal’s upcoming monster movie, Renfield.

The film stars Nicholas Hoult as Dracula’s notorious lackey, R.M. Renfield, who appeared alongside the Count in Bram Stoker’s original novel. The film will follow his exploits as the unhinged henchman and former asylum dweller.

But while the film is said to be set in the present day, little else is known about Renfield.

It is understood that Renfield will be an origin story of sorts, so it’s likely we encounter the title character during his time as an inmate of an insane asylum not far from Dracula’s first English home, Carfax. Renfield is set to be directed by Chris McKay, based on an original story outline from Robert Kirkman with a script by Ryan Ridley.

During the original novel, R.M. Renfield is thought to be suffering from delusions, but it’s later discovered that he’s actually under the influence of the legendary vampire himself, Count Dracula. However, details remain scarce (with nothing said of the upcoming film’s plot) and it’s currently unknown whether his psychologist, Dr. John Seward, has been cast in the movie, or whether he will appear at all.

It’s good news for Nic Cage fans though as the eccentric actor bags the literary role of a lifetime.

Nicolas Cage has seen something of a resurgence of late, with rave reviews for his recent starring role in Pig. He will next take to the big screen as himself in The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent – the upcoming action-comedy flick from director Tom Gormican.

Renfield also marks a return to major studios for Cage, whose last big studio flick was Ghost Rider: The Spirit of Vengeance in 2011. Since then, he’s starred primarily in quirky and often downright weird indie films.

Meanwhile, it looks as though Universal is continuing to grow its Monsters franchise, with an upcoming remake of The Wolfman following the successful reimagining of The Invisible Man.

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

Writer Steve Conrad has joined the crew of Dunk & Egg, HBO's new Game of Thrones spinoff based on George R. R. Martin's novellas. Conrad will join Dunk & Egg as writer and executive producer, Deadline reports. His major credits include Amazon series Patriot, Perpetual Grace LTD, The Pursuit of Happyness, and more. He also more recently wrote and co-directed Ultra City Smiths, the stop-motion detective noir mystery series on AMC.

Conrad has also written Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, the Julia Roberts and Owen-Wilson led Wonder (based on the novel of the same name), and Nicolas Cage's The Weather Man.

Dunk & Egg is a prequel series of novellas set prior to the events of A Song of Ice and Fire: Game of Thrones. The novellas follow the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall (the titular Dunk) and Aegon V Targaryen (Egg) 90 years prior. Martin released the first novella in 1998, the second in 2003, and the third in 2010 before they were collected into a special edition titled "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms."

The series was announced in early 2021, so cast and further crew details remain scarce. It's possible that the series may still get scuttled, but the inclusion of Conrad shows that HBO intends to follow through on its plans for multiple Game of Thrones spinoffs in the wake of its divisive 2019 finale. HBO is also producing a separate spin-off titled "House of the Dragon" based on the Targaryen family set 300 years prior to Game of Thrones. HBO previously canceled another Game of Thrones prequel project starring Naomi Watts in 2019.

If you thought the spin-offs ended there, HBO is also working on three animated spin-offs, one of which will be set in the kingdom of Yi Ti (inspired by Imperial China), and a spin-off focusing on Princess Nymeria.

Despite the apparent flood of Game of Thrones series on the way, Martin recently told Insider that he wished the core series had run for a total of 10 seasons to avoid the ending feeling abrupt and curtailing certain plot threads.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/spin-off for IGN.

Square Enix has warned players ahead of Final Fantasy XIV's Endwalker Early Access period that its servers may be congested.

The team is anticipating more simultaneous logins than usual, so the servers have been optimized ahead of Endwalker's release in order to increase login caps. Due to the ongoing shortage of semiconductors, Square Enix was unable to add new Worlds, but will still be considered later.

When a World reaches its maximum player cap, then a login queue will appear. Even if it isn't counting down, the process is still functioning and it will admit players in order. Players who have the full version of the game will be prioritized over the ones playing the free trial version. Players will be able to log into less-crowded Worlds within the same data center as their homeworld, but during peak suggestion times, players may still experience login queues while using this feature.

In terms of characters, new ones cannot be created in a World that is experiencing congestion. Creating new characters requires them to be logged in to the World so that they can be added to the database and go through the entire creation process. Players may also experience an "Error 2002" when selecting a character in the selection menu. This is also due to high traffic or when a login queue exceeds 17,000 players. In order to avoid this, players will simply just have to wait before trying to log in again.

Additionally, any players who are inactive for 30 minutes will automatically be logged out in order to reduce the amount of server congestion. Square Enix also mentions changes to instanced content, which is a copy of an area created for a small number of players. Player traffic will be staggered during main scenario and quest progression and a queue is being put in place just in case congestion does occur. Players will be given a queue number and will also just have to wait to be admitted into instanced areas.

Final Fantasy XIV's Endwalker expansion releases on December 7 for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC. It was originally supposed to launch this month but was delayed by two weeks.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN

Spider-Man: No Way Home still isn't out for over two weeks, but the ticket presales are already off the charts. Deadline reports that No Way Home's first day of presales on Fandango have surpassed 2019's Avengers Endgame, which ended up opening at $357 million. No Way Home also passed Black Widow's first day presale in just two hours, which held the previous record for 2021.

No Way Home's presale also beat out huge pre-pandemic blockbusters like Avengers: Infinity War, Spider-Man: Far From Home, and three recent Star Wars movies: The Last Jedi, Rogue One, and The Rise of Skywalker.

The numbers spell good things for the movie industry's bounceback from COVID-19, as No Way Home is beating presale numbers for multiple pre-pandemic movies. Other MCU movies, including Shang-Chi, are also seeing box office success amidst the continuing Coronavirus pandemic.

The Spider-Man franchise generally pulls in great box office numbers. Far From Home was the most successful Spider-Man movie at the box office, bringing in over $1.1 billion, good for the 25th highest-grossing movie of all time.

The early success in presales makes sense for this film, given the anticipation surrounding three generations of Spider-Man characters coming together. In fact, multiple theater websites crashed after tickets went live yesterday, leading to scalpers selling No Way Home tickets for thousands of dollars.

While Spider-Man star Tom Holland says they treated No Way Home as the "end of a franchise," we recently learned Holland will continue on as the MCU's Spider-Man after No Way Home.

For more to ready while you wait for the big premiere date, check out five burning questions we have after the No Way Home trailer, or read up on J.K. Simmons' new take on J. Jonah Jameson

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

Activision Blizzard is currently facing serious ongoing allegations of harassment and mistreatment of marginalized workers. To learn more, please visit our timeline as well as our in-depth report on the subject.

A slew of new details about Call of Duty: Warzone's new Pacific map has been revealed. A new blog post from Activision shows off numerous new pictures and the actual in-game map of Caldera, the Pacific island replacing the fictional eastern European region of Verdansk.

At a glance, the map looks roughly the same size as Verdansk, which was already pretty huge. The image also shows off the named points of interest, such as the mountain "Peak" sitting in the northern center, the sandy shores of the "Beachhead" to the east, and a new airfield to the southwest. Why an oceanside resort is placed next to a submarine pen, I can only guess. Caldera is set in the Pacific theater of 1944, so expect plenty of familiar WWII iconography.

If you're wondering what these points of interest will look like in action, Activision released numerous new screenshots showing off each major location.

Activision also announced that Call of Duty: Vanguard owners will receive access to the Caldera map 24 hours early, on December 8. Players who don't own Vanguard will simply be dropped onto the smaller Rebirth Island in the meantime. Once Caldera releases for all players, Rebirth Island will be disabled for an unspecified time, but Activision says it will return later in season one.

Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific will also attempt to streamline Warzone's meta. The new battle royale map will launch with 40 weapons, 38 of which are from Vanguard, and more than a dozen operators based on Vanguard characters.

Loadouts will only be able to contain Vanguard weapons, and players will only be able to find Vanguard weapons scattered around the map. So don't expect to bring your near-future weaponry into battle. Activision is also altering the speed and radius of circles to account for aerial dogfighting.

Other new features and changes include:

• Any player who wins a gulag match will respawn with any weapons and equipment they acquired in the gulag, rather than a default pistol.
• The Dead Silence perk is receiving a nerf.
• Stopping Power Rounds are disabled.
• Nerfs to stun grenades, heartbeat sensors, and dual-wield melee weapons like the Kali Sticks and Sai.
• Loadout Drop Markers can only be purchased from Buy Stations after the Loadout Drop event occurs in-match.
• Buffs for the snapshot grenade, the stim, decoy grenade, and increased damage to "most lethal equipment."
• Gas masks won't interrupt "as many" actions as they previously did.
• The addition of gas canisters containing the same poison gas in the circle, but with a much smaller radius. You can also pick up and throw gas canisters.
• Shallow water can hide footsteps (although not entirely), even on players you're tracking via the Tracker perk. Crouching in knee-high water will give you the Cold Blooded perk. Fire-based weapons will also trigger smoke when making contact with water.

New Contract types include:

• Supply Drop, which drops a single crate of valuable loot for all players onto the map, but only the team who started the contract can see its exact location on the map.
• Big Game Bounty: Targets the player with the highest kill count, but only once per game.
• A "Top Secret" Contract that Activision has redacted any info on.

Keep in mind that the previously announced kernel-level driver will be required for all PC players in Warzone's next update, and will come to Vanguard's multiplayer at a later date.

Call of Duty: Warzone Pacific launches on December 8 for Vanguard owners and December 9 for all other players. In the meantime, Activision is handing out some serious bans for Warzone cheaters, including all past, present, and future Call of Duty games.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/operator for IGN.

With 2021 coming to a close Netflix is looking ahead to 2022. The streamer announced new release dates for highly-anticipated shows like Vikings: Valhalla and revealed some more genre shows coming next year.

Vikings: Valhalla is a spinoff of History’s popular Vikings series. While streamers like Netflix are known for rescuing shows from cable, Vikings held a proper season finale in 2020 before planning a new spinoff at Netflix. Vikings: Valhalla will premiere on Netflix on February 25, and there are new photos from the show you can see in the gallery below.

Vikings: Valhalla is set 100 years after the end of the original series in the early 11th century. The series will follow famous Vikings like Leif Eriksson, his sister Freydis Eriksdotter, and a Nordic prince named Harald Sigurdsson. This is also a time where the Vikings and English royals will be at odds over supremacy.

Netflix also announced release dates for Archive 81 which will premiere on January 14, 2022, In From the Cold which will premiere on January 28, 2022, and Raising Dion Season 2 which will premiere on February 1, 2022.

Archive 81 follows an archivist named Dan Turner (Mamoudou Athie) whose job is to restore a collection of damaged videotapes from 1994. These tapes were created by a documentary filmmaker named Melody Pendras (Dina Shihabi) investigating a cult. As work on restoring the tapes continue, Dan believes he can rescue Pendras from her terrifying end 25 years ago.

In From the Cold stars Margarita Levieva as Jenny, an American woman and single mom with a dark history as a Russian spy with special abilities given to her by the KGB. She’s tasked by the CIA to solve the mystery behind a series of bloody incidents involving someone with her abilities.

Finally, Raising Dion is a continuation of Nicole and Dion who developers superhero-like abilities. Set two years after the defeat of the Crooked Man, Dion continues to develop his powers while meeting other superpowered students like Brayden.

These shows only cover Netflix’s first two months of 2022. Netflix announced a wider slate of genre shows coming out that year, but without release dates. They include previously announced shows like Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, The Sandman, and Resident Evil, as well as The Cuphead Show!, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, and a new Mike Flannigan horror series, The Midnight Club.

Meanwhile, Netflix is set to end 2021 with The Witcher season 2 coming in December. Netflix also recently released the live-action Cowboy Bebop which you can check out our review here.

Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor. You can reach him @lawoftd.

Metroid Dread developer MercurySteam is currently working on a third-person action RPG that will be set in a dark fantasy world, and has partnered with Control publisher 505 Games to make it.

505's parent company, Digital Bros released a press release announcing that MercurySteam's next game is codenamed Project Iron – a third-person action RPG set for release on PC and consoles. While the company hasn't commented on a potential release window for the game, it does note that the project's initial investment amounts to 27 million euros (or around 30 million dollars).

Elsewhere in the announcement, it is stated that Project Iron's IP is co-owned by MercurySteam and Digital Bros. While very few details have emerged about the project so far, it looks like it should be in safe hands given MercurySteam's wealth of experience. Prior to developing Metroid Dread, the company also worked on titles such as Metroid: Samus Returns and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow.

“We are thrilled to work with the team at MercurySteam, a proven studio that over the years has created
numerous phenomenal IPs – including the recent hit release Metroid Dread in partnership with Nintendo,”
explained co-CEOs of Digital Bros. Group Raffi and Rami Galante. “With MercurySteam’s creative vision and talent and 505 Games' extensive experience, gamers can expect a high-quality, captivating and engaging videogame.”

MercurySteam launched Metroid Dread alongside Nintendo back in October. While the series certainly has its fair share of devoted fans, the game's success allowed it to comfortably beat record sales in the US for the series - a factor that could bode well for the future of the franchise.

Following its release, the game debuted as October's third best-selling game in the US. Despite being released over a week into that period, Metroid: Dread also came out as the highest-ranked selling game on the Nintendo Switch.

For more on Metroid Dread, make sure to check out our review of the game, where we awarded it a 9/10 and stated that it "brings back the [franchise's] legendary exploration and progression and merges it with excellent modern combat and some of the best boss fights ever."

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.

A new Starfield developer diary has revealed new concept art from the upcoming Bethesda game, as well as discussed its focus on grounded, realistic exploration.

In the video diary, Game Director Todd Howard explained that the staff at Bethesda Games Studios all had exploration in mind when it came to what Starfield would be about. "Coming to Starfield, everybody's starting over and saying 'What would you want to do? What does going to space mean to you?'" he said. "And everybody comes back with the same one: I want to see what's out there."

But compared to Skyrim's epic fantasy setting and Fallout's retropunk apocalypse, Starfield will offer a different approach to how we will explore. "It's got a more realistic, science-based backing to it," said Art Director Matt Carofano. "This is a more grounded game and a grounded setting about exploration. So I think that gives us a different take on how we make everything."

Howard notes that, despite the more grounded, scientific approach, the way the world works will still be similar to that seen in The Elder Scrolls games. "The mechanics of the world are entirely different, but there are similarities," he said. "I think that those are the things we like. We like playing first person. We like having all the coffee cups, we like being able to touch everything. Those moments make the whole thing believable. Being able to watch the sun set and night-time come, and just sit there and watch the world go by seems like it's not gameplay, but it is vital to how you feel through the rest of it."

Howard also points out that "It is a universe, not just a game," and how that affects the design process. The video includes a lot of concept art of astronaut food and other 'mundane' things that help make the world of Starfield more believable and authentic. He also discusses that culture is important, and so things like toys, bedtime stories, art, and entertainment are all woven into the world.

He also teases that there will be more than one moment akin to emerging from Fallout's vault or Oblivion's starting dungeon. "We always have that 'step out' moment into the world," he said. "I like to say that Stafield has two 'step out' moments. It's cryptic."

For more from Starfield, see how the game will react to your pronouns, and fully support mods. You can also check out our interview with Todd Howard, where he revealed Bethesda had to make Starfield now or never.

Matt Purslow is IGN's UK News and Entertainment Writer.

Second Life creator Philip Rosedale has cast his doubts over Facebook's plans to create its own metaverse.

In a recent interview with Axios, the Rosedale spoke about his doubts over future attempts to build a metaverse and the questions that still remain over the digital spaces.

Rosedale somewhat pioneered the idea of a playable metaverse with Second Life, an online platform that saw players create avatars and take up residence in a virtual world. Those visiting Second Life did so for a number of reasons - whether that be on a smaller scale to socialize with friends and check out the surroundings or at a more in-depth level by taking up jobs as performers, politicians, or teachers. There was certainly plenty to keep people occupied.

Rosedale founded Linden Labs in 1999, where he worked until 2013. During that time, Second Life became an increasingly popular way to live digitally. Over the years, a huge number of people engaged with the platform, which peaked at over a million users, even leading the Swedish government to set up an embassy within the platform.

Having worked for the best part of two decades on the concept, Rosedale explains how his views on the concept have changed over time. “I think what we've learned — and somewhat with some sadness, given the work that I've done, I would have to agree — is that it's not for everybody, and maybe it's never for everybody," he says.

As part of the interview, Rosedale spoke about the draw of the metaverse at the time stating that there was a belief that, "inevitably we would all spend an increasingly large fraction of our lives in a virtual world." Despite the game's popularity, however, the creator highlights a number of lessons that he's learned from his time with Second Life.

According to Rosedale, despite Second Life granting the freedom for people to escape reality and live altered lives in a digital setting, people didn't generally want to spend long periods in it. The creator cites that people felt uncomfortable controlling avatar versions of themselves and communicating that way with others.

Rosedale says that a number of those factors are still yet to be answered by newer companies like Meta, who are looking to build toward new versions of a metaverse. "There still arises this weighty question of what is it that's going to cause, you know, normal people, a lot of the time, to be willing to go into these online spaces," he says. “And I think we still haven't answered that question.”

Despite casting his doubts over further pursuits to build a metaverse, Rosedale is still optimistic that virtual worlds will play a part in how people interact in the future. “You might be able to create a public space that could be a positive thing for people — where you could go and make new friends, where you could cry out about injustice,” he says before noting that this modern vision would necessitate public freedom and not be controlled by one large corporate company.

For more on Facebook, make sure to check out this article detailing the company's recent rebrand to Meta and how it coincides with the company's big focus on creating a metaverse.

Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.