Netflix has locked down several high-profile creators to TV and movie deals over the last few years, including Ryan Murphy, Shonda Rhimes, David Fincher and Game of Thrones duo David Benioff and Dan Weiss. The latest talent to join Netflix's stable is Dan Levy, the star and co-creator of Schitt's Creek who won four Emmys for the hit Canadian sitcom last year.

Levy's first Netflix project is a romantic comedy movie that he'll write, produce, direct and star in, according to Variety. He can't work on any shows for Netflix until his TV deal with Disney studio ABC Signature expires next summer.

Netflix played an important role in Levy's rise to stardom after it started streaming Schitt's Creek in 2017. “Netflix offered Schitt’s Creek a second home at just the right time and opened the doors to a whole new audience for us,” Levy said in a statement. “Watching the show thrive there has only enhanced my excitement about continuing to tell specific, meaningful stories with them in both TV and feature film.”

Levy has some other projects in the works elsewhere, including through his ABC deal. Hulu ordered a pilot last month for an animated comedy called Standing By from Levy and fellow Schitt’s Creek writer Ally Pankiw.

Ken Block's Hoonigan Industries has built a fully functional Warthog vehicle, and the team is showing us the process it went through in a new series on YouTube. While it's far from the first life—size version ever made of Halo's famous armored vehicle, this one actually works — it even debuted at the world premiere of the movie Free Guy, which stars Ryan Reynolds, a bank teller who discovers he's but an NPC in an open-world game. 

The Hoonigan team created its real life Warthog using a custom rock crawler chassis. As Autoblog notes, it doesn't have a mounted gun, but it undeniably looks like the Warthog with its chunky body, futuristic shape, curved windshield and enormous tires. Even its interior is a replica of its virtual counterpart, and the team also made sure it has a four-wheel steering system. To power the beast, the team took a Ford V8 engine and added two turbos to it, giving it a 1,060 horsepower capacity.

The Warthog appears across games in the Halo franchise as a driveable military vehicle, and the Hoonigan team built a replica of it to promote the upcoming Halo Infinite game that's launching in December. Hoonigan, the brainchild of rally driver Ken Block who was also behind The Gymkhana Files, will upload new episodes showing how the Warthog was built every week until October 14th. You can watch the first one below:

David Bowie famously used a Stylophone on "Space Oddity" all the way back in 1969. Over half a century later, Stylophone maker Dubreq has released a Bowie version of the synthesizer.

Dubreq teamed up with The David Bowie Archive on the limited-edition Bowie Stylophone. It's not functionally different from a regular Stylophone, though. There's a Bowie logo and it comes with a booklet that dives into his music and features archive photos.

Still, given Bowie's long association with the instrument (he used it on the 2002 song “Slip Away” as well), it could be a neat memento for fans. You can buy the Bowie Stylophone from Dubreq's website for $40.

Netflix is continuing to experiment with storytelling formats. Filming is underway on a heist thriller series called Jigsaw (which has nothing to do with the Saw movies, as best I can tell). Although it won't be an interactive project like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch or Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt: Kimmy vs. the Reverend, it's a non-linear show. According to The Hollywood Reporter, you can watch the first seven episodes in any order leading up to the finale, similar to Paramount+ series Interrogation.

Jigsaw is loosely based on a real story in which $70 billion in Wall Street bearer bonds were at risk due to flood waters caused by Hurricane Sandy. The story spans 25 years, from decades before the heist to a year afterward.

The show has a solid cast, with Giancarlo Esposito, Paz Vega, Rufus Sewell and Jai Courtney among those involved. Breaking Bad and The Mandalorian star Esposito will play a veteran thief who can't stay away from a life of crime. Vega, meanwhile, plays an attorney who goes above and beyond to protect those close to her.

Ridley Scott is among the executive producers of the series, which was created by showrunner Erica Garcia. There's no release date for Jigsaw just yet, but it's maybe worth keeping an eye out for so you can put the puzzle pieces together when it arrives.

Facebook has announced a new policy that allows it to take out networks of accounts engaging in “coordinated social harm.” The company said the change could help the platform fight harmful behavior it wouldn’t otherwise be able to fully address under its existing rules.

Unlike “coordinated inauthentic behavior,” which is Facebook’s policy for dealing with harm that comes from networks of fake accounts, coordinated social harm gives the company a framework to address harmful actions from legitimate accounts. During a call with reporters, the company’s head of security policy Nathaniel Gleicher said the policy is necessary because bad actors are increasingly trying to “blur the lines” between authentic and inauthentic behavior.

“We are seeing groups that pose a risk of significant social harm, that also engage in violations on our platform, but don't necessarily rise to the level for either of those where we’d enforce against for inauthenticity under CIB [coordinated inauthentic behavior] or under our dangerous organizations policy,” Gleicher said. “So this protocol is designed to capture these groups that are sort of in between spaces.”

Gleicher added that the new protocols could help Facebook address networks of accounts spreading anti-vaccine misinformation or groups trying to organize political violence. In announcing the change, Facebook said it took down a small network of accounts in Germany that were linked to the “Querdenken” movement, which has spread conspiracy theories about the country COVID-19 restrictions and has been “linked to off-platform violence.”

Facebook said it could take “a range of actions” in enforcing its new rules around coordinated social harm. That could include banning accounts — as it did with the “Querdenken” movement — or throttling their reach to prevent content from spreading as widely.

The issue of how to handle groups that break Facebook’s rules in a coordinated way has been a difficult one for the company, which up until now has primarily focused on taking down networks that rely on fake accounts to manipulate its platform. The issue came up earlier this year following the January 6th insurrection as Facebook investigated the “Stop the Steal” movement. According to an internal report obtained by BuzzFeed News, Facebook employees suggested its existing policies weren’t equipped to handle “inherently harmful” coordination by legitimate accounts, which prevented it from realizing “Stop the Steal” was a “cohesive movement” until it was too late.

During a press call, Gleicher said that the “work on this policy started well before January 6th.” But he added that the company’s work against high-profile groups had informed their decision making. “If you think about our enforcement against QAnon-related actors, if you think about our enforcement against ‘Stop the Steal,’ if you think about our enforcement against other groups — we learned from all of them.”

This post contains light spoilers for season two, episode six of ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks.’

In last week’s episode, Lower Decks wrapped up the first half of its second season by addressing some leftover plot threads from season one, namely Rutherford’s memory loss and the fallout between Mariner and Boimler. With those issues out of the way the series is free to move forward. But first, this week’s “The Spy Humongous” takes some time to look at an average day onboard the USS Cerritos. It’s not quite the TNG classic “Data's Day,” but it’s close enough for fans of smaller, more intimate Trek stories.

There’s no strict division between A-plot and B-plot this time, with both upper and lower decks crew starring in four loosely connected stories. The bridge crew is attempting to negotiate a ceasefire with the Pakleds, while the ensigns have been assigned to “artifact reclamation duty,” which is a fancy way of saying “clearing out weird space junk.” Boimler is thrilled, but he gets pulled away by a group of career-driven “redshirts” who think his time on the USS Titan makes him prime command material. And Ransom ends up babysitting a Pakled defector/tourist/spy. It’s a grab bag of jokes and Star Trek lore, sure to please any long-time Trekkie.

CBS

However, it’s still remarkably newcomer friendly, in that it doesn’t require too much background to understand the basic plot, while also illustrating the show’s core concept as a show about the nuts and bolts of Starfleet. If this were a live-action show it would be what’s called a “bottle episode,” one shot on a limited budget using pre-built sets and the regular cast. Even on the one exotic locale we’re shown — Pakled Planet — we never actually go inside any buildings. It’s an interesting contrast to last week’s expansive tour of Starbase 25.

In live action programming, bottle episodes exist because a show blew through its guest star or special effects budget on a big important story, and “An Embarrassment of Dooplers” would fit that bill. But as I pointed out last week, Lower Decks is not limited by what a set designer can build or how much makeup an actor will wear or how long would it take to render a sentient gaseous anomaly on a green screen. The animators can draw whatever needs to be drawn. So there’s no reason to follow the trope of a bottle episode except that… they want to.

CBS

Lower Decks has made no secret that it’s essentially a giant love letter to Star Trek. What was initially predicted to be “Family Guy in space,” ended up treating the franchise with a lot of respect, and was packed full of jokes for the fandom to discuss and catalog in places like Reddit and Trek wiki Memory Alpha. But this week’s adventure illustrates that attention to Star Trek tropes and backstory can go beyond showcasing little-seen alien species or getting justice for murdered characters.

It’s also about the love of how Star Trek tells its stories, with a strong emphasis on the personal aspect. Here we get to see Freeman, Mariner and the others simply do their jobs. We know they’re not going to die, especially not mid-season, so it’s really about seeing how they handle adversity and ultimately, what made them Starfleet material in the first place.

Sony’s upcoming live-action adaptation of Twisted Metal has found its leading man. Altered Carbon and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie will play the role of series protagonist John Doe. Deadline was the first to report on the casting. “We’re thrilled to have Anthony Mackie on board. His ability to blend comedy, action and drama is perfect for the Twisted world we’re creating,” Asad Qizilbash, the head of Sony’s PlayStation Productions unit, told the outlet.

News that Sony was developing a live-action adaptation of the Twisted Metal franchise first came out at the end of February. The company is billing the project as an action comedy, with Deadpool and Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick set to produce the series. Cobra Kai scribe Michael Jonathan Smith is also on board to write and produce.

Twisted Metal is just one of the properties Sony is in the process of adapting for television and film. At the end of March, the company announced it was making a Ghost of Tsushima movie. Its The Last of Us series at HBO also recently found its Joel and Ellie in Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

2001 was quite a memorable time in gaming. Standout titles include Grand Theft Auto III, Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X. It was also the year Xbox made its debut, while the Sega Dreamcast bowed out. But while all that was going on Nintendo was still going strong, releasing the Game Boy Advance in March of that year and a new home system in September. The GameCube was quite a console, an adorable box with a great wireless controller and fun add-ons like the Game Boy Player. 

Unfortunately, the system was plagued by a thin library, especially compared to the PlayStation’s combined roster of PS1 and PS2 games. But what titles they were — it gave us Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Monkey Ball and the original Animal Crossing. On the GameCube's 20th anniversary in Japan the Engadget staff looks back at their favorite titles from that era which, once again, doesn't include some of the obvious candidates. — Kris Naudus, Buyer's Guide Editor

Donkey Konga

I’ll be honest; I was late to the GameCube and the only reason I bought one was for Donkey Konga. I first played this rhythm title at a Toys ‘R’ Us and fell in love with those stupid bongos. A year before Guitar Hero this was the party game du jour, and I took my cube and controllers everywhere. I quickly unlocked every song, and became an absolute master at “Oye Como Va.” It was followed by a sequel and the bongos were even the default control scheme for Donkey Kong Jungle Beat, but nothing matched the sheer joy of playing that first installment and the sore palms that ensued. — KN

Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem

Call it the anti-Resident Evil. Eternal Darkness puts you in the shoes of Alexandra Roivas, a young woman trying to solve the mystery of her grandfather's horrific death. Its century-spanning story covered a dozen characters, all connected to an ancient Lovecraftian god. While there's combat, it was more about psychological trauma than the survival horror of Resident Evil. Most notably, it had a sanity meter that would change the gameplay and environment and even throw simulated system errors to freak out players. Take that, Metal Gear Solid.

Like many GameCube titles, Eternal Darkness was clearly an attempt to attract an older audience. It was the first M-rated game published by Nintendo, and the company kept the trademark alive for a decade. But it was never re-released outside of the GameCube, and hope for a direct sequel was squashed when developer Silicon Knights filed for bankruptcy in 2014. There was an attempt at a spiritual successor, Shadow of the Eternals, that fell apart after failing to raise enough money via crowdfunding. It's almost fitting that a game about millennia-old evil may end up being lost to the sands of time. — Devindra Hardawar, Senior Editor

Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance

After the runaway success of Awakening and Three Houses, it’s hard to see what made Path of Radiance, Fire Emblem’s only GameCube release, so special back in 2005. Nearly two decades later its presentation looks stiff and dated, and the game is missing the relationship mechanics beloved by newcomers. But in Path of Radiance you’ll still find many of the elements that came to define later Fire Emblem games.

They exist in a sort of prototypical form since this was the first game in the series to make the jump to 3D. We take a lot of it for granted now, but back then series developer Intelligent Systems had to figure out the mechanics for the first time. And it did, making for a game that’s still fun to play to this day. It has one of the best stories in the series, with an English script that captures a lot of the nuances of the Japanese original.

It’s that story that made me fall in love with Path of Radiance when I first played it more than 15 years ago. Even when the game was at its most punishing, I wanted to see what would happen to Ike and his band of mercenaries. Path of Radiance was my first Fire Emblem game, but it’s the one I keep coming back to because of just how much I enjoyed my first playthrough as a teen. — Igor Bonifacic, Contributing Editor

F-Zero GX

The original F-Zero for the Super NES is one of those games I wore out as a teenager. While the futuristic space racer only had 15 courses, they were beautiful and challenging, and even when I did well, I always felt like I could do a little better. A decade later, F-Zero GX hit the GameCube and showed just how far racing had come.

The basic concept is the same: high-speed futuristic hovercraft battling it out in wild, creative courses where one mistake can lead to disaster. The GameCube’s horsepower meant the courses were longer, more complicated and visually stunning. The sense of speed was probably the biggest change, though: even now, 20 years later, this game feels incredibly fast. That speed makes it positively unforgiving, and I never progressed that far through the game’s many challenges. Driver AI was also significantly improved. In the first game, you mostly only had to worry about the three main rivals. But in GX, it’s easy to end up in 15th or 20th place in the blink of an eye if you’re not careful.

Despite that, I still remember the game fondly, in large part because it’s the last real entry in the F-Zero franchise. I didn’t play the Nintendo 64 entry in the series, so the jump from the SNES to the GameCube was pretty mind-blowing at the time. It’s a shame that Nintendo has let the series languish since then, because I’d love an updated version of GX for the Switch. — Nate Ingraham, Deputy Managing Editor

Mario Kart: Double Dash

I have fond memories of Mario Kart: Double Dash for a not-unique reason. In the early 2000s, my friends and I had frequent co-op video game nights, and Double Dash was a mainstay in our lineup. Mario Kart games have always been amazing in local multiplayer, and Double Dash was no exception. After Mario Kart 64, it was disappointing that all four players couldn’t compete directly against each other, but we quickly got used to the game’s unusual mechanic that let one player drive and another throw weapons. Having two teams of two players was an interesting wrinkle to the gameplay, and it makes Double Dash one of the more unusual games in the series.

As with most GameCube games, it looks wonderful. Mario Kart 64, like a lot of N64 games, hasn’t aged as well visually, but Double Dash is still gorgeous, and Nintendo took a major step forward in terms of creativity and variety in the game’s levels. There are more hidden routes and ways to approach each level than ever before, and the scope of boards like Wario Colosseum and the game’s take on the ubiquitous Rainbow Road were unmatched at the time. It’s no coincidence that almost every course in this game has appeared in subsequent versions of Mario Kart — so even if you never played Double Dash, you’ve likely come across some of its iconic tracks. — NI

Metroid Prime

In the 80s and 90s, the Metroid franchise was defined by three classic titles: the original Metroid for the NES, Metroid II: Return of Samus on the Game Boy, and Super Metroid on the Super NES. They cemented Metroid gameplay as a side-scrolling action / exploration game, with a non-linear set of levels. Players would come across areas that you couldn’t fully explore before beating bosses and finding items in other parts of the game.

Metroid Prime, however, completely turned the series around, putting it in 3D for the first time. While the style resembled a first-person shooter, the gameplay still put exploration at the forefront, rather than fast-paced gun fights. That said, the game is plenty challenging, even punishing at times in its difficulty: its massive bosses and twisting tunnels full of enemies were unforgiving.

But for me, the most memorable part of Metroid Prime is the incredible atmosphere of Tallon IV, and the wonder of finding new sections of the deserted planet to explore. Prime also did a great job at expanding the story and lore of the Metroid series, with loads of scannable items that explain what happened to the ruined world. The sequels to Metroid Prime are great, but this first game is arguably the best in the series and a huge part of why we’re all so excited about someday getting our hands on Metroid Prime 4. — NI

Odama

It’s such a strange concept that it sounds like some developer’s fever dream — a combination pinball strategy game with voice control. But Odama was quite real, and it was glorious. Like any tactical wargame, you controlled an army of men (though via voice commands) who needed to overtake the enemy gate at the top side of the display. Complicating things was a giant ball that destroyed all in its path, but fortunately, you could exert some control over it with a pair of flippers at the bottom of the screen. There was a lot going on and it was utterly bonkers, but if you managed to beat Odama you were rewarded with the best ending theme to a video game ever. — KN

Pokémon Colosseum

Though the Pokémon series is, at its heart, a role-playing game series from Japan, it’s not very typical of the JRPG genre we’ve become accustomed to through franchises like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. But way back in 2003 second-party developer Genus Sonority tried its hand as a more “traditional” story-based RPG, placing the player in the shoes of a reformed criminal trying to rescue Pokémon from his former organization. Pokémon Colosseum took place in the cyberpunk-flavored Orre region, as opposed to the more pastoral settings of the handheld RPGs. The “snagging” mechanic for collecting Pokémon was interesting, and the storyline had more of an edge to it. It was followed by a sequel in 2005, Pokémon XD, but I’d love to see this spinoff series continued on the Switch. — KN

Resident Evil 4

It's easy to forget that Resident Evil 4 was initially a GameCube exclusive. It's been re-released on practically every platform, including the Oculus Quest 2 later this year. But it all started on Nintendo's purple box, a platform not known for having many action titles. The game's staying power makes sense though. It's the first Resident Evil game rendered completely in 3D, and it featured a slick over-the-shoulder camera that made shooting infected baddies feel genuinely kinetic.

Resident Evil 4's gameplay would go on to influence not just the entire series, but most action games moving forward. It was also a great example of the GameCube's unheralded horsepower, which could deliver smoother and crisper graphics than the PlayStation 2. Even today, the original GameCube RE4 still looks fantastic, with high-quality character models and environments teeming with detail. In comparison, the PS2 version look like a muddy mess. — DH

Skies of Arcadia Legends

It may not be fair to call Skies of Arcadia Legends a GameCube game, since it's just a port of a classic Dreamcast title. But I'm giving it a shout because it's still one of the best RPGs I've ever played, and perhaps reminiscing about it will finally spur on a digital re-release. The GameCube port fixes some of the frame rate and stability issues from the Dreamcast, and adds new characters to boot, making it the definitive version of the game.

Set in a world of floating continents, Skies of Arcadia Legends focuses on sky pirates who embark on a world-saving journey, naturally. You can explore a 3D world map with your airship, which gets into large-scale turn-based battles with other vessels and giant enemies. Much like Chrono Trigger, you can tell that Skies of Arcadia comes from a dream team of developers. In this case, the staff previously worked on Phantasy Star, Panzer Dragoon and Sakura Wars.

While Sega originally planned to bring Skies of Arcadia to the PlayStation 2, it ended up focusing on the GameCube port instead. Perhaps Nintendo has a stake in that port and we just don't know. Still, it'd be nice to play such a well-crafted game once again. I can't be the only person who still regularly listens to its epic soundtrack. — DH

After expanding to Samsung TVs earlier in the year, Movies Anywhere, the service that allows you to keep your digital film collection in one place, is now available on Xbox consoles. Starting today, you can download the app on Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. Movies Anywhere works with most digital storefronts, including Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play, Vudu and of course the Microsoft Store.

The Xbox version of Movies Anywhere includes support for the platform’s Watch Together feature, which means you can take part in online watch parties with up to nine other people and talk in a shared chat room. Screen Pass is also supported. If you’ve already accepted a rental invitation sent to you by a friend or family member, you can watch the movie on your Xbox. Moreover, once you connect your Microsoft Store account to Movies Anywhere, you can watch the content you purchase there on any other device that supports the platform.

Xiaomi is challenging Facebook in the wearables arena by launching its own smart glasses. The device will be capable of displaying messages and notifications, making calls, providing navigation, capturing photos and translating text right in real time in front of your eyes.

Developing...