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The Verge’s entertainment section collects the latest news from the worlds of pop culture, music, movies, television, and video games. Whether you want to know what to watch on Netflix or how to make the most of your streaming service budget, the entertainment section acts a reliable source. There’s simply too much to read, watch, hear, and play. Let us be your tour guide.

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The return of Gamergate is smaller and sadder

A group of gamers has mobilized a harassment campaign against a story consultant company, marginalized developers, and journalists in protest of what they see as ‘forced’ diversity in gaming.

A24’s Problemista is a surreal fairy tale about finding the people who truly see you

A24’s phenomenal new surrealist comedy feels like a story that only writer / director Julio Torres could pull off.

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Cross-saves for Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox are working again.

Xbox didn’t get Baldur’s Gate 3’s most recent updates due to a bug that caused the game to crash on the Series X / S. This prevented players from loading cross-saves on platforms with the update.

But now, Larian has announced that hotfixes #20, #21, and #22 are coming to Xbox, which should fix any issues with syncing game saves. The latest update also addresses some crashes and issues with Minthara’s dialogue.


The best entertainment of 2024

Our guide to the most interesting games, movies, and TV shows of the year.

Physical media week

Exploring the importance of discs and cartridges in an increasingly digital age.

June the 4th be with you.

Live-action Star Wars show The Acolyte will bring the High Republic era of the franchise to TV for the first time on June 4th.

StarWars.com announced the show’s premiere date with this less-than-subtle bloody lightsaber poster, reading “In an age of light a darkness rises.” Spoooooooky. Also, the site says to expect the series’ official teaser trailer tomorrow.


A picture of a concrete floor with a lightsaber laying on it, a streak of what looks like blood rising from it.
Seems... dark.
Image: Disney
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LeBron James and JJ Redick are starting a podcast.

As athletes increasingly cut out the media middleman, basketball stars LeBron James and JJ Redick are launching a podcast, reports The Athletic. But unlike so many other celebrity podcast deals, they are doing so independently and with no official sponsor. To be fair, it doesn’t seem like James or Redick need the money.

Update 6:20PM ET: Added YouTube embed for Mind the Game.


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You can watch March Madness games for free in the Vision Pro.

The NCAA’s March Madness Live app is also getting a new, swipeable vertical video highlights feed.

The “Vision Pro compatibility” means the iPad app, so you won’t get any “spatial” features, but at least it’s there (unlike, say, YouTube). What, did the Samsung Gear VR app not do well or something?

The NCAA also says it’s offering “expanded live game radio” for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.


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He takes a whiskey drink, he takes a vodka drink, he takes a lager drink, he takes a mayonnaise drink.

Stardew Valley’s next update, due out on PC tomorrow, has added a very special, very specific feature: the ability to drink mayonnaise. ConcernedApe, the cozy farming sim’s developer, tweeted the news without context or explanation. There is no information on whether this was the fulfillment a long-asked for feature or something else.


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Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver’s first trailer is even busier than its title.

If it’s been a while since you thought about Sofia Boutella in Rebel Moon — Part One: A Child of Fire as Imperium soldier Kora, there’s a solid chance Rebel Moon — Part Two The Scargiver’s new trailer will leave you more than a bit confused about what’s going on.

The movie hits Netflix on April 19th.


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All of Sony’s live-action Spider-Man movies are swinging back into theaters.

You can easily watch most of Sony’s live-action Spider-Man movies on Disney Plus if the mood strikes you. But if you’ve been yearning to see Tobey Maguire, Andrew Garfield, and Tom Holland’s Peters Parker back on the big screen, you’ll have a shot at catching all eight of the past Spidey films in select theaters beginning April 15th.


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If “Hulu for Sports” works, this guy could be the next Disney CEO.

There’s a lot in this Wall Street Journal profile of ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro. The switch to streaming; the Hulu for Sports plan; the battle over ever-more-expensive sports rights. But the undercurrent here is pretty clear: if ESPN can make all that work over the next couple of years, Pitaro might get Bob Iger’s office. (But that’s a really, really big if.)


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DirecTV will let you cut out local channels to save money.

The satellite company announced today that subscribers choosing its new “No Locals” package will save $12 a month.

The company helpfully suggests viewers drop local channels in the summer months to try it out and add them back in the fall. As Variety notes, that just so happens to be when the NFL, which is increasingly streaming in more places, picks up again.


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More rumored specs for the PS5 Pro.

Tom Henderson at Insider Gaming reported GPU specifications and performance targets for a “PlayStation 5 Pro” on Friday, and now he says that just like the recently revised PS5, the Pro will also have a detachable disc drive.

Other new details include rumors of faster memory running at 576 GB/s (a 28 percent boost over the PS5), better audio performance, and a new “High CPU Frequency Mode” that boosts performance by 10 percent over the standard PS5.


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Animation preservation saves the day.

Famed animator Max Fleischer’s granddaughter, Jane Fleischer Reid, has been supervising restorations of his work, according to the New York Museum of Modern Art’s description of its recent film series showcasing him.

Gizmodo spotted this pre- and- post-restoration comparison of a clip from the original nine-episode run of Superman cartoons. Fleischer Reid’s Fabulous Fleischer Cartoons Restored group has been posting other samples on X, too.


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How to get free, on-demand music in the pre-streaming service era.

I’ll be telling my grandchildren this was Napster.


Starship Home uses mixed reality to make your living room an intergalactic greenhouse

This Quest 3-exclusive spaceship sim will put you in charge of caring for the galaxy’s plants.

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Can an Emmy-nominated actor make the Glasgow Wonka experience a stage hit?

That bizarre Wonka experience set in a creepy warehouse in Scotland is apparently getting a musical, with comedian Riki Lindhome (of Garfunkel and Oates fame) involved.

It’ll be called Willy Fest: A Musical Parody, and the producer, Richard Kraft, hopes people who watch it “won’t be left in tears,” according to the BBC.


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Prepare your final popcorn bowls for the last Twitch Prime Video Watch Party.

A Twitch help page says it’s ending the feature that lets people watch Amazon Prime Video and chat together on April 2nd, as its usage has “declined over the years” since its 2020 rollout.

The feature lives on for Prime Video subscribers. But if you and your friends want to watch Ricky Stanicky or whatever, the host will need to have an ad-free subscription.


Watch Parties

[help.twitch.tv]

Behind Ryuichi Sakamoto’s last performance

The legendary Japanese composer wanted to record his final concert. So he asked his son, Neo Sora, to direct it.

“The bundles, they are like children to me.”

Larry Hryb, aka “Major Nelson,” did a little reminiscing on Threads this week, posting videos from his time with Microsoft’s Xbox division, which he departed from back in December.

One video is him running down features of the original incarnation of Xbox Live, but I’m more interested in this parody of defunct electronics store Crazy Eddie’s commercials — something the company did regularly.


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Duck Game will continue.

When Warner Bros. announced it would be capriciously removing Adult Swim games from Steam, my heart went out to Duck Game developer Landon Podbielski, whose zany quackfest helps keep my circle of friends playing together year after year.

So I’m very pleased to report that Podbielski not only owns the rights to the Duck Game IP, he’s promising to keep it going: “I will never stop updating it as long as my hands and eyes work,” he writes. Full blog:


The Future Of Duck Game

[Duck Game Unleashed]

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James Gunn is making a Teen Titans movie.

Aside from Batman and Superman, we don’t really know which DC superheroes will make up the foundation of James Gunn and Peter Safran’s new cinematic universe of cape projects at Warner Bros. Discovery.

But the studio’s just announced its plans to produce a new live-action Teen Titans movie from writer Ana Nogueira, which — for other films — could portend the arrival of characters like Wonder Woman and the Flash as the larger franchise continues to come together.


This voice cast is looking sus.

We still don’t know much about the Among Us animated series, but the show has its crew, with a voice cast including Randall Park, Ashley Johnson, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Elijah Wood. Sounds like a group that would really love a pizza party.


A promotional photo of Ashley Johnson in the Among Us animated series.

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Image: CBS
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The sports streaming mega-service now has a CEO.

Pete Distad has been named CEO of the upcoming sports streaming service from ESPN, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery. Distad has had lengthy stints at both Apple — where he had a big hand in getting Apple TV Plus off the ground — and Hulu. He left Apple back in May.

The as-yet-unnamed service will launch this fall and is expected to cost around $50. “Pricing is going to be in the higher ranges of what people have talked about,” Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch said in early March.


Are we really going to ban TikTok?

On The Vergecast: what we do and don’t know about TikTok, why all the other apps are trying to be TikTok, and the photo scandal rocking the royals.

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If you play Minecraft through the Xbox app on PC, don’t update the game.

Mojang has just posted a warning that says you could lose all your worlds if you download the latest Minecraft update through the Xbox app.

To get around the issue, Microsoft says to run the Gaming Services Repair Tool for PC and then install the update. You can find more information about how to do this here.