“I don’t think that Game Changer gets meaningfully more ambitious than this season without me getting arrested,” Sam Reich — CEO of Dropout but, more pertinently, host of its flagship competition series, Game Changer — tells Polygon.  Seven seasons in, Game Changer has hosted miniature versions of half a dozen reality shows, pulled off even more unique feats of intricately constructed mindfuckery, and variously terrorized, rewarded, thwarted, and bamboozled Dropout’s...

A long-hidden piece of film history trivia has finally been uncovered. On April 5, New York Times visual investigator Aric Toler announced on Bluesky that he and British academic Alasdair Spark found the original photo that was doctored for the ending of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Despite the fact that this photo is one of the most famous images from any horror movie, its actual origins, and the real-world location...

For those of us who grew up in the 1990s or early 2000s, A Goofy Movie was everywhere. Substitute teachers showed it during the last lazy days before summer vacation. Disney Channel played it during prime cartoon-watching hours. And friends loaded up the VHS tape during sleepovers. The 1995 blockbuster disappointment deserves the cult classic status it eventually attained: It has great music, heartfelt scenes, and a poignant message about...

Hoo boy, is there a lot of new TV this week. Basically everywhere you turn you will find exciting new TV premieres and finales (this is technically true all the time, but we’re talking about more curated stuff for the week). It’s hard to go wrong with any of the options this week. Perhaps the best way to put it is what kind of tension and stress you want to...

A Minecraft Movie isn’t exactly indelible cinema for the ages, but it’s a massive box office hit — and a charmer, in large part due to Jack Black’s endlessly frantic energy and Jason Momoa’s absolute go-for-broke willingness to be the butt of every joke. It’s aimed both at an audience that grew up with Minecraft and the audience that’s invested in it right now, so it’s a pretty typical brand...

It’s important to start with the fact that there’s only so much you can say about The Last of Us season 2. After all, its reputation precedes itself: The Last of Us Part 2, at the time of its release in mid-2020, became a bit of a lightning rod for every opinion one could have on the games’ story of ruthless love and revenge, the state of games and the...

A24’s Death Stranding movie has found its director. Michael Sarnoski, who helmed A Quiet Place: Day One and Pig, will direct the live-action adaptation of the Death Stranding franchise, A24 announced Monday. Sarnoski is also writing the screenplay, the company said. “The film will delve into the mysteries surrounding the ‘Death Stranding’ – a catastrophic series of events that blurred the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the...

Tuesday morning, Lionsgate announced that among a trio of new projects in the John Wick universe, there will be an animated prequel movie about the night the master assassin initially broke free from his obligation to the High Table. Intended for “more mature audiences,” the movie will be directed by Shannon Tindle (Ultraman: Rising) and written by Vanessa Taylor (Game of Thrones, The Shape of Water). Keanu Reeves will return...

“People don’t understand how close D&D and wrestling are,” said Brennan Lee Mulligan. And he’s speaking from an informed perspective, ushering Dimension 20: Titan Takedown into the world this week.  In the new four-episode season of the long-running anthology actual play show, Mulligan hosts four WWE superstars — Xavier Woods, Kofi Kingston, Bayley, and Chelsea Green — to a game set in a professional-wrestling-themed reimagining of Greek mythology. And despite...

Netflix’s gleeful horror-comedy Dead Talents Society wears a lot of its influences out in the open. Writer-director John Hsu talked with Polygon earlier this month about how YouTube streamers, ’90s Taiwanese pop music, Satoshi Kon’s Perfect Blue and Tokyo Godfathers, and real Asian urban legends like “the little girl in red” helped inspire his manic movie about the capitalist grind of the afterlife. In Dead Talents Society, ghosts endlessly chase...