Inspirations

There are plenty of sampler platters to sift through during Steam Next Fest, but if you’re a Mega Man fan looking for something fast and fun, you need to set aside a half-hour or so to check out the Berserk Boy demo.  Developed by BerserkBoy Games — hey, if you’re gonna put all your eggs in one place this ain’t a bad basket — Berserk Boy currently has a couple of levels available in its demo. After a brief opening that finds our hero learning how to harness his berserk potential, we’re immediately thrust into…

Originally released in 2022, Stray‘s tale of friendship and a search for home captivated the collective attention of the gaming world and the internet at large. Initially, that was all thanks to its biggest hook — playing as a cat. A nameless, adorable stray that had many charmed before it’d even launched. And, to my surprise, what originally sounded like a gimmick turned out to be one of the year’s most creative platformers. Refreshingly, Stray had proven me wrong. In Stray, you’re an orange tabby in an underground…

I t was a perfect Hollywood afternoon. There was sun, a slight breeze, and some of the most famous faces on the planet. And for Demna Gvasalia, there was fear.  The Balenciaga creative director has proven himself one of the most adept and blunt bottlers of our zeitgeist for the past decade, and his artistic interpretations are among the most polarizing and debated in fashion. It’s perhaps understandable then that after the brand’s first Los Angeles show in its 105-year history, he was “very afraid” to talk…

A cult animated short with over 92 million views made a dark darling out of Hazbin Hotel, and its popularity inspired a legion of fans to raise a little hell so it could get picked up to series. It’s now a Prime Video animated (and very adult) musical comedy, and io9 got a chance to talk with creator Vivienne Medrano to learn more.The Woman Who Would Be PhotonHazbin Hotel follows Charlie Morningstar (Erika Henningsen), the Princess of Hell, as she opens a hotel with the goal of rehabbing demons in order to peacefully…

Get our free weekly email for all the latest cinematic news from our film critic Clarisse LoughreyGet our The Life Cinematic email for freeJulianne Moore and Natalie Portman have responded to Vili Fualauu’s criticism of May December, which is said to have taken inspiration from the latter’s infamous relationship with Mary Kay Letourneau.The two actors co-star in director Todd Haynes’s latest dark comedy about a former convict Gracie (Moore), who was jailed for having sexual relations with her young son’s school-aged…

Prince of Persia exists in such a strange place for me. I'm a huge fan of Assassin's Creed, a series clearly built on the bones of a Prince of Persia sequel we never got, but I've never played any of the original Prince of Persia games that inspired that first Assassin's Creed. So to see the series return in 2024 with Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is exciting--I can finally see why people liked the lore and mythology of this series without going back to play games over two decades old (and even older…

After Carly Rae Jepsen released the album Emotion in 2015, her A&R asked to see the songs that had ended up on the cutting room floor. Jepsen wasn’t ready to let them go, but she also didn’t know if they would ever live to see the light of day. A year later, she found an excuse to revisit them and released the EP Emotion: Side B. It birthed a new series both Jepsen and her fans love, one she refers to as her “B-sides.” After releasing Dedicated in 2019, Dedicated: Side B followed, this time as a proper…

Photo via Lionsgate The John Wick franchise unites the cinematic virtues of old Hong Kong martial arts epics with a nasty twist on superhero films. Like action blowouts of yore, they rely more on real-world stunts than post-production effects. Since fighting its way into theaters in 2014, the vengeful tale of an ex-hit man on the road to redemption has taken the world by storm and forever changed action movies. Before John Wick, movies with any sort of action were pretty straightforward: Punchy-punchy,…

Image: Disney ChannelA new buddy comedy is coming to the Disney Channel and Disney+. Inspired by animated favorites like The Simpsons and DuckTales, Kiff is a new generation’s slice-of-life series in which—surrounded by friends and family in an eccentric community—two friends find adventures just around the corner.io9 recently sat down with Kiff creators Nic Smal and Lucy Heavens to chat about the show. It centers on a spunky squirrel protagonist and her laid-back bunny bestie Barry, and takes inspiration from the people…

What are you smiling at, Superman?Image: DC ComicsIt’s been an exciting week for fans of superhero movies, especially if you love DC Comics. This week, James Gunn and Peter Safran, who together run DC Studios at Warner Bros., revealed the start of their 8-10 year plan to bring DC heroes like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman back to their rightful place on the mountaintop of comic book culture.But that plan—10 projects, five on HBO Max and five in theaters, making up the first part of chapter one in a larger, connected…