Julian, Jeremy and Daniel are all back this week as they cover as much news as possible before the deluge of E3 comes crashing down next weekend. Starting with movies the guys discuss the shakeup behind the scenes of Justice League, the casting of Tom Holland as a young Nathan Drake and Jeremy gives a brief review of Wonder Woman (spoilers: he liked it). On the TV front; Netflix's new cancellation strategy and the finales to the DC CW shows are discussed. Finally, leading into E3 there isn't much gaming news but that doesn't mean there isn't some kind of controversy to create discourse. Far Cry 5 was announced and along with it came more than it's fair share of criticism and Julian lays out his thoughts on the whole thing. All this and so much more, including What We've Been Watching and a fresh game of Nerd Association, on this week's Tower of Babble Podcast!
Keep your eyes glued to our Twitter and Facebook page for information on when we will be recording our E3 special as well as insight and commentary on all the major stories coming out of the year's biggest gaming conference.
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Show Notes
Nerd Association
Theme: Naughty Dog
- Round 1: Crash Bandicoot
- Round 2: The Last of Us
- Round 3: Uncharted
Trailers
- Spider-Man: Homecoming final trailer
- Game of Thrones S7 first official trailer
- Netflix Castlevania animated series reveal trailer
- Batman and Harley Quinn
Movies
- Zack Snyder has stepped down from directing Justice League, which is in post production, and is passing the baton to Joss Whedon, who was working on the Batgirl script, after his daughter committed suicide.
- Roger Moore, most remembered for playing James Bond has passed away.
- Wonder Woman spoiler free review.
- According to exec-producer Charles Roven, Aquaman takes place AFTER Justice League.
- Wonder Woman sequel will be set in modern times.
- Sony has cast Spider-Man, Tom Holland, to play a young Nathan Drake in the Uncharted movie.
- Gina Prince-Bythewood will direct Silver and Black. The Black Cat, Silver Sable spinoff film.
- According to director Josh Boone the New Mutants film is “a full-fledged horror film set within the X-Men universe”. He went on to say “There are no costumes. There are no supervillains. We’re trying to do something very very different.”
- We now have an official name for the previously unnamed Universal Monsters Shared Universe. It’s now called the Dark Universe franchise.
- Doug Liman has left the director's chair for the Justice League Dark film.
- Follow-up discussion on the idea that Rotten Tomatoes is somehow the reason that some recent film have bombed at the box office after some studio executives have made statements alluding to it.
TV
- DCW Finales.
- Netflix thinks it should be cancelling more of it’s original series. Speaking to CNBC Reed Hastings, the Netflix founder, said that the streaming services "hit ratio is way too high right now. We’ve cancelled very few shows, I’m always pushing the content team: We have to take more risk; you have to try more crazy things. Because we should have a higher cancel rate overall. You get some winners that are just unbelievable winners, like 13 Reasons Why. It surprised us. It’s a great show, but we didn’t realize just how it would catch on.”
- Marco Polo, Sens 8, The Get Down are just some of the originals they’ve cancelled without giving them a final season.
- The Weinstein Company and Dimension are developing a Sin City TV series based on the Frank Miller graphic novels.
- WB Animation is looking to reboot Animaniacs. It’s still early and there’s no network attached yet but Steven Spielberg will apparently work on it in some capacity. He helped produce the original 90’s program.
Games
- Far Cry 5 was revealed along with a trailer, details and a release date.
- Set in Hope County, Montana, you will play as a Jr Deputy trying to prevent “Eden’s Gate”, a doomsday cult, from taking over the county.
- The game has already received a lot of press for it’s setting and choice of villains who are presented as extreme nationalists. I wrote a brief piece on our Facebook page that discussed this. I was worried the games politics and surrounding discussion, especially in this heated political climate, would outshine any conversation about the game itself and I think that’s a real shame.
- Nintendo has pushed back the launch of its payed online service to 2018. But we did get some new details. It will cost $3.99 for a one month membership, $7.99 for 3 months and $19.99 for 1 year.
- Middle Earth: Shadow of War, has been delayed. Moving to October 10th, 2017.
- Red Dead Redemption 2 has been delayed to a spring 2018 launch.
- Sonic Mania, the remixed old school Sonic game, is set for release August 15, 2017 on all the major platforms.
What We've Been Watching/Playing
- Alien: Covenant
- 12 Monkeys Season 3
- House of Cards Season 5
- Coherence