A Pokémon card store in Manhatten has become the latest target for thieves looking to steal merchandise featuring the lucrative pocket monsters — and this time, customers were held at gunpoint.
Speaking to ABC News, staff at the Poké Court outlet in the Meatpacking District have said that $100,000 worth of stock was stolen in just three minutes, as a team of three robbers burst into the newly-opened store during its first community evening event.
As one thief smashed glass cabinets to obtain expensive items, another held shoppers at gunpoint. A third, meanwhile, kept watch at the door. "It was a free event and then three armed men just came in and brandished guns in [customers'] faces," store owner Courtney Chin said. The shop has since employed a security guard.
ABC News reports that similar thefts have occured in Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle, as the latest in a long line of card shop robberies targeting Pokémon items.
"If you look at any local card shop around the country, there's a good chance they've gotten robbed," Chin added. "I've seen videos where the robbers will tunnel in through the walls, or through the ceiling.
"We can't let a few bad apples like this ruin the hobby for everyone else," Chin concluded. "We want to create a safe space for the community and it really sucks that like 50 people had to basically get held up and held hostage."
Image credit: ABC News.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
A full breakdown of what is a smaller update for the troubled FPS installment was published on its official website today. BF Studios describes the update, which has a January 20 release date and serves as the first update Battlefield 6 has seen in a month and a half, as “a smaller set of focused improvements aimed at polish and consistency.”
Still, patch 1.1.3.5 delivers a set of improvements, gameplay tweaks, and balance changes fans have anticipated since launch arrived in October. Jet combat will feel quite different going into the extended Season 1, with cannon damage against other flying vehicles significantly reduced, requiring “approximately 40% more hits” to destroy targets. There’s currently no sign of the previously mentioned dedicated air radar, which was promised to arrive after Season 1 in December.
BF Studios has had a jet balance pass in its sights for some time, but the January 20 update for Battlefield 6 is also said to come with what sounds like a pretty wide-ranging update for melee combat. As players have complained of inconsistent knife and sledgehammer attacks, patch 1.1.3.5 aims to improve responsiveness, consistency, and sprint behavior for those who like to get up close and personal. Another set of smaller changes targets the Assault Ladder, which should behave, well, more like a ladder going forward.
Battlefield 6 Season 1 launched October 28 and was scheduled to bring its REDSEC offshoot, maps, weapons, modes, and more to the experience through early-to-mid January. As the three-part debut season came to an end, players were left wondering how Season 2 might reinvigorate an experience that was steadily falling out of favor with fans.
It wasn’t until January 13, much later than many expected, that BF Studios was finally ready to speak on Season 2, but the news update wasn’t exactly the one many were expecting. Instead of a roadmap, the team announced that Season 2 had been delayed to February 17, with its contents to be detailed at a later date. In its place, Season 1 will roll on, with smaller updates and bonuses to be delivered during the downtime.
Now, Battlefield 6 update 1.1.3.5 will keep the ball rolling, even if it’s just a slight nudge toward the next major content drop. In other news, it was announced this morning that The Division lead Julian Gerighty had left Ubisoft and to join BF Studios developer DICE.
Finally, you can read the full 1.1.3.5 patch notes below.
Battlefield 6 Season 1 Update 1.1.3.5 Patch Notes
With Update 1.1.3.5, we’re delivering a smaller set of focused improvements aimed at polish and consistency across Battlefield 6. This update enhances melee responsiveness, refines jet combat, improves ladder interactions, and resolves UI and HUD issues in Multiplayer and REDSEC, alongside fixes for Battle Royale and Gauntlet stability.
The update will be available on Tuesday, January 20, at 9 AM UTC (1 AM PDT, 4 AM EDT, 10 AM CET).
Major Updates for 1.1.3.5
Improved responsiveness, consistency, and sprint behavior for melee attacks, including knives and the sledgehammer.
Updated jet combat balance by reducing jet cannon effectiveness against other air vehicles.
Updated and refined the UI and HUD across Multiplayer and REDSEC, improving armor bar visibility, reticle presentation, and menu navigation.
CHANGELOG
VEHICLES:
Fixed an issue where vehicles could explode when a takedown was performed on an enemy soldier lying on top of them.
Reduced jet cannon damage against other jets and helicopters, requiring approximately 40% more hits to destroy enemy air targets.
WEAPONS:
Bipod attachments no longer display as always providing a hipfire accuracy bonus, as this bonus only applies while the bipod is deployed.
Fixed an issue where the GRIM 1.50x optic on the DB-12 cost fewer loadout points than intended (15 instead of 25).
Fixed an issue where the RPKM iron sights would shoot low when using the short barrel.
Fixed an issue where the TR-7 Light Barrel incorrectly improved muzzle velocity.
Fixed bipod mount input behaviour for Alternate, Lefty Alternate, Southpaw, and Legacy Southpaw presets so the bipod mount now follows the melee button.
Improved attack speed for knife melee attacks.
Improved buffering behaviour for knife and sledgehammer attacks.
Improved consistency of melee damage timing against enemies and the environment.
Improved consistency of recoil modifiers when using a controller across different weapons.
Improved how sprint is interrupted when performing melee attacks. Sprint is now only interrupted until the attack reaches its target, rather than for the full duration of the animation.
In the Firing Range, target dummies can now take damage while in the process of getting back up.
Shooting with a suppressor now emits a small muzzle flash when viewed from close range only.
GADGETS:
Fixed an issue where the GDPIS was not destroyed when targeted by the XFGM-6D Recon Drone, Defibrillators, or the Repair Tool.
Fixed an issue where the Sniper Decoy did not properly hide scope glints from nearby snipers.
Assault Ladder
Fixed an issue where ladders positioned above the player could not be entered.
Fixed an issue where soldiers could be launched unexpectedly when attempting to enter a ladder.
Improved the soldier animations while climbing ladders.
UI & HUD:
Added a new option allowing players to customize the reticle colour inside weapon and gadget scopes.
Fixed an issue where home screen focus navigation could become locked to the bulletin.
Fixed cases where weapon menus displayed incorrect Reload Time stats for LMGs.
Soldier lightning improvements to the front-end
Improved front-end lighting to enhance the visual quality of soldier characters.
The Reticle Colour option now correctly updates reticle colours for Thermal Scopes and other supported gadgets.
VFX & Video:
Adjusted explosion particle effects by lowering the shockwave force.
REDSEC
WEAPONS:
Fixed an issue where jump landing movement speed reduction behaved inconsistently in REDSEC compared to other multiplayer experiences.
MAP & MODES:
Fixed an edge case in Gauntlet mode “Data Extraction” where the drone could disappear permanently if drives were deposited at the exact moment it landed.
UI & HUD:
Battle Royale
Fixed an issue where the armor bar could disappear intermittently.
Fixed an issue where the Airburst Incendiary Launcher icon appeared as a grenade in the loot feed.
Gauntlet
Fixed an issue where the armor bar could disappear after quickly editing a loadout.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He's best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
This 2008 Nintendo DS Disney tie-in has been the focal point of numerous viral campaigns over the years, which have seen the users of notorious internet imageboard 4chan propel the game to notoriety despite (or because of) the fact it is... not very good.
Now, seemingly, the game has achieved cult status to the point where copies are changing hands for hugely-inflated sums of money on eBay. A look at recently-sold listings on the auction site shows copies have been bought for as much as $399.97.
Auctions currently in progress have copies set to sell for as high as $700 at the time of writing. Meanwhile, half a dozen completed listings from earlier this week show copies that have sold for over $100. Last year, similar listings show the game selling for around $15.
Currently, Disney Cory in the House is still the joint-second best game listed on Metacritic by user ranking, with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 not yet dethroned. Earlier this week, IGN contacted Metacritic to ask if it planned to intervene at some point to put an end to the mischief. As of yet, the company is yet to comment.
If you have a copy of Disney Cory in the House yourself — or you can source one from a local second-hand store — now might be a good time to try and turn a profit. Or, of course, you could hang on to the title — which IGN rated as an "awful" 3/10 when it released almost two decades ago.
"The game has some of the clunkiest controls we've seen, the presentation is insultingly stupid, the minigames are hardly games at all, and on top of everything it's really short," IGN wrote in our Disney Cory in the House review. $400 well spent, then.
Image credit: Disney.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
Bethesda’s former Elder Scrolls loremaster has revealed his idea for The Elder Scrolls 6 story, and how it would have set up The Elder Scrolls 7.
In an interview with PC Gamer discussing his dissatisfaction with working at Bethesda and subsequent departure from the company following the release of Starfield, Kurt Kuhlmann said if he had got the chance to lead The Elder Scrolls 6 it would have been like the beloved Star Wars movie The Empire Strikes Back.
Kuhlmann, who left Bethesda in 2023 after more than 20 years at the studio, said that in his story the elven supremacists the Thalmor would not only have been the big bad of The Elder Scrolls 6, but they would have ended the game on the road to victory. This, he said, would have turned Elder Scrolls’ long-running ‘player is the chosen one’ who achieves a definitive victory at the end of the game plot on its head, saying that while you would have “preserved hope for the future” by the end of The Elder Scrolls 6, “overall it looks like the Thalmor are on the march.”
The problem, Kuhlmann said, is that he doubts Bethesda would go for an Elder Scrolls game with a “bad” ending such as this, and a cliffhanger is "completely unfeasible" because it takes so long for Bethesda to release new mainline games in the fantasy series. "That's not a good way to end a game and say, yeah, we'll see you in 10, 15 years,” he said.
Alas, Kuhlmann’s idea is just that: an idea, and it’s unlikely that the actual storyline of The Elder Scrolls 6 will turn out to be anything like it. As for when we’ll find out, it could be some time yet. Last year, amid increasing pressure from fans for some information on the game, Howard said The Elder Scrolls 6 wouldn’t be out for some time. In an interview with GQ magazine to celebrate the release of Fallout 4 Anniversary Edition, Howard said The Elder Scrolls 6 is “still a long way off,” adding: “I’m preaching patience. I don’t want fans to feel anxious.”
More recently, speaking to Game Informer, studio design director Emil Pagliarulo pointed to GTA 6’s high-profile delays as the “smartest thing they could do.”
“What do fans really want?” he asked. “Do they want a game that comes out before it should and doesn’t meet their expectations? Or do they want the turkey that is in the oven for long enough to be delicious when it finally comes out of the oven, you know? That’s what I think people are going to want. So, we’re going to take our time and as long as it needs to be great.”
Purkeypile said he assumed Bethesda announced The Elder Scrolls 6 so early because the studio was announcing Starfield at a time when it had already been so long since Skyrim came out, so “we needed to make sure people were not just pissed at us.” He continued: “it’s a very expensive way to do that, though. Those trailers are not cheap.”
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Chris Pratt’s breakthrough film role was in director Timur Bekmambetov’s 2008 action romp Wanted. Now, nearly two decades later, Pratt reunites with Bekmambetov for the upcoming sci-fi thriller Mercy, where he plays Chris Raven, an LAPD homicide detective who finds himself in the literal hot seat when he’s accused of killing his wife.
In a near-future Los Angeles, justice is meted out by an artificial intelligence dubbed the Mercy Program, a system Raven himself championed until he wakes up strapped to an execution chair. Raven only has 90 minutes – played out in real time, making Mercy a literal ticking clock story – to prove his innocence to his AI judge (played by Rebecca Ferguson) or he will be executed.
Chris Raven, Pratt explained, “is a part of this special new Mercy Program that they've designed, essentially using AI to modify their court system, to be more efficient and to face the rise in capital crime in this version of Los Angeles. They just want to get these murderers off the street and send a message. And so my character has put eight people in this chair, each of whom were found guilty and immediately executed. And I find myself now on the receiving end of justice.”
The hungover Raven has to not only serve as his own defense counsel but also the detective investigating his wife’s homicide and his own actions preceding the murder. His alcoholism, violent temper, and strained relationship with his wife all point to him being her killer – and the Mercy Program proving its lethal efficiency at dispensing justice. “You're really peeling back the onion of not only what happened that night, but who this person is,” Pratt said. “The deeper you go, the more you realize this is a man who may have committed this crime.”
Enjoy this exclusive scene from Mercy:
The Mercy Program’s AI grants defendants access to anything in its jurisdiction with a camera installed – from doorbells and traffic lights to cell phones and social media – to search for evidence to aid their defense. The court’s AI can also access any digital information a defendant has sent or received via text or email.
“All the evidence that's being presented to us [in court] is there at any moment, sometimes up to a thousand screens in front of me of my life, this character's digital life over the past 10 years, and that's being used as evidence against me,” Pratt said.
“So we had to shoot me in the chair, but we [also] had to shoot every bit of that stuff that would then be put in post-production and provided as me yelling at my wife on my daughter's Instagram, her secret Instagram page that I find out she had, or various FaceTime calls that were stored in the Cloud that is used as evidenced against me, all my friends, all my family, the things that they've said, security footage, all of the stuff that is the evidence being used to find me guilty. Or innocent.”
During the Mercy panel at NYCC, Bekmambetov reflected on how much of life people, including himself, spend in front of screens, speculating it’s as much as half of their time in the real world and the other half in a digital one.
“It means half of events, [the] most important events of my life happening, not in [the] physical world now, it's happening [virtually]. I'm saying, ‘I love you, sorry, you're fired,' whatever, it's all happening now in [the] digital world.”
For the director, Mercy then is not just about entertaining audiences as a Screenlife movie, but also, as he put it in the film’s production notes, exploring “how we behave and interact with technology.”
The many screens used in the Mercy Court ultimately make Mercy, which was filmed for IMAX and will play in 3D theaters, an Augmented Reality theatrical experience for audiences. “It'll be like an AR movie because it's not about three-dimensional faces,” Bekmambetov promised. “It's more about screens flying in the theater. Literally in the theater, you will see how the screens [are] surrounding you.”
Producer Charles Roven was also on hand at NYCC, where he recounted the “very complicated” task of shooting Mercy as a Screenlife movie experience.
“All of these screens are making a different point in terms of the trial. And I had never experienced anything like that. Watching it go from shooting each individual screen to bringing all those screens together in the courtroom and then having the screens come at you was complicated, very complicated. I had never done anything like it before. And even watching Timur's [other] Screenlife movies, he may have had one or two screens, but not 15 at this exact same time coming at you.”
Roven added, “That 3D experience will give you a kind of real-life sense of what Chris [Raven] is experiencing in the chair, because those screens will not just come at you in a 2D way. They'll almost look like they're coming at you out of the motion picture screen into the audience.”
Mercy opens in IMAX and 3D theaters on January 23.
Editor’s note: These interview quotes were edited for clarity.
Thinking of giving your PS5 setup a bit of a color refresh for the new year? Sony is here to help. The company has dropped a brand new Hyperpop Collection of console covers and DualSense controllers that features three striking new color options: Rhythm Blue, Remix Green, and Techno Red. If the controllers have caught your attention, they're now available to preorder from both Amazon and PS Direct for $84.99 each.
You'll have to wait a couple of months to get your hands on them, though, as they're set to be released on March 12. Don't let that stop you from placing a preorder, though. It's worth securing your favorite controller now, as there's every possibility they could sell out.
Preorder PS5 Hyperpop Controllers
These are certainly an eye-catching addition for a PS5 setup. Leo Cardoso from the Color, Material, and Finish design team at Sony said in a PlayStation Blog post that, "We’re cranking the volume all the way up with a collection that doesn’t just stand out, it takes over the room. Inspired by the glow of the RGB lights of your impressive gaming setups, these new colors go LOUD in the best possible way."
They also feature quite a glossy finish, which Sae Kobayashi of the same design team says in the PlayStation Blog post "makes the colors POP more than ever." Alongside the controllers, Sony's also revealed console covers in the same colors. If you're curious to buy those as well for a matching setup, check out our breakdown of the full Hyperpop Collection.
Outside of these new releases, if you're on the hunt for some PS5 deals instead, it's worth checking out Best Buy's Winter Sale. This features some great offers at the moment on games, and even the PS5 Fortnite Flowering Chaos Bundle, so you can save on some new items for your PlayStation this year.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
Two new quest mods have been released for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition. These mods offer over 7 hours of new free content to the game. As such, I highly recommend downloading them as they can further enhance and extend your gaming experience. These two quest mods are The Steep Descent and The … Continue reading Skyrim Got Two New Quest Mods, Offering Over 7 Hours of Free Content→
Looks like LEGO isn’t done with The Legend of Zelda franchise yet. A new previously teased (and leaked) set based on the Nintendo 64 classic Ocarina of Time is up for preorder. It costs a relatively reasonable (for LEGO) $129.99 and will release on March 1. Comprised of over 1,000 pieces, it depicts the game’s final battle against Ganondorf. You can preorder it now, exclusively at the LEGO Store.
LEGO The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - The Final Battle
The set features Ganon’s ruined castle, with flames and rubble strewn around, as well as various brick pieces and spires leaning at odd angles. It comes with minifigures for Link, Princess Zelda, and Ganondorf, plus a buildable transparent Navi. The set’s pièce de résistance is a hulking, towering buildable Ganon, who is clearly the focal point of the build. He has two swords, each of which are roughly twice the size of the minifigures.
LEGO sets based on pop culture almost always have hidden Easter eggs, and this set is no different. It has three Recovery Hearts and the Megaton Hammer hidden in the movable rubble. Pressing a button raises Ganondorf into the castle, just like in the game. You can also equip Link with the Master Sword and the Hylian Shield.
This set looks pretty great and will almost certainly earn a spot in our list of the best Nintendo LEGO sets on the market once it comes out. It’s not the first Zelda-themed set, either. In 2024, LEGO released an impressive re-creation of the Great Deku Tree that you can build in both its Breath of the Wild or Ocarina of Time versions. This Final Battle set looks to continue the tradition of high-quality Zelda LEGO builds aimed at adults.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End Season 2 debuts on January 16 on Crunchyroll.
Perhaps one of the best things about Frieren: Beyond Journey's Endis how comfortable it is with low stakes even in a fantasy world full of potential excitement and turmoil. The Season 2 premiere luxuriates in daily rituals and understated reaffirmations of the bonds between its core trio: Frieren, a long-lived elven mage, her stern prodigal apprentice Fern, and the warrior Stark.
The show is set long after Frieren and her previous party of adventurers helped end the reign of a tyrannical demon king together, and became storied heroes with statues and tales told about them. The series began with the passing of her closest companion Himmel from old age. By comparison, Frieren, who is already hundreds of years old, still looks like a young woman, and will for centuries to come.
The melancholic tone of the series was set almost immediately in Season 1's (excellent) feature-length premiere, which quietly observed the passage of time for Frieren, who sees decades as though they were mere weeks. This is how the death of her longtime friend (and potential love interest) Himmel snuck up on her. The first episode of Season 2, with the invitational title "Shall We Go, Then?", marks 29 years since that time. It also marks the arrival of a new series director, Tomoya Kitagawa, an episode director on the previous season who takes over here from Keiichiro Saito (also known for the great and hilarious Bocchi the Rock).
Sinking back into the comforts which made the show stand out in the first place, the dramatic stakes remain relatively low in this premiere, which is simply focused on Frieren's current party continuing to travel, bicker and reflect on the state of the world together. It's not without adventure, as giant angry beasts pursue them through the wilderness, but the show treats this as just another day. Like in the first season, Frieren: Beyond Journey's End's simple pleasures come from both its beautiful animation production (courtesy of the artists at Madhouse) as well as in seeing people underestimate the depth of Frieren's knowledge. That may be in the context of demons quietly trying to take over a city, or as in this episode pulling out a magic nullifying rock buried decades prior – either way, the main character's coyness about her stature and power is a delight. The depiction of the changing world around her is equally pleasing to the eye and ear, with the lush soundtrack from Evan Call contributing greatly to the latter area.
"Shall We Go, Then"has a little bit of everything as it gets reacquainted with familiar faces from the back half of the first season and the relationship dynamics between the main three: Fern and Stark's will-they-won't-they, when-the-hell-will-they bickering, and Frieren's quiet amusement at this situation. It's not a particularly plot-forward episode but this is part of why Frieren is enjoyable. As ever, the style of dialogue is very reserved and clipped; they also talk about things which are rather mundane, like how that magic nullifying rock works. It's refreshing to get an anime series as capable at action design as Frieren which also has the patience to not overindulge in the bloodshed. There's actually room for the character work to breathe.
It's refreshing to get an anime series as capable at action design as Frieren which also has the patience to not overindulge in the bloodshed.
The episode is comprised of two rather simple tales, especially when compared to the previous arc of the show, which had Frieren and Fern undertaking a complicated magic exam. The Season 2 premiere focuses a little more on Stark and his feelings about the group and himself – first through the tale involving the aforementioned rocks, and then in a plot concerning a job offer.
This interest in exploring even just the geological curiosities of this fictional world ties in with Frieren's hunger for knowledge and how she uses her vast amount of time on the Earth to learn everything she can. Previously this knowledge had no direction, and though this first episode of Season 2 is deliberately sparse and slow-going, it still shows a world of difference simply in how Frieren is applying the fountain of knowledge at her command. Chiefly, that’s by sharing it with a younger generation, and watching what they do with it.
"Shall We Go, Then?" doesn't really give a strong indication of where the season is going other than the next destination on the map, which is actually a point in its favour: just as Frieren savours new experiences, the show thrives on finding stories in unexpected places.
Solo: A Star Wars Story was made "too soon" after audiences had last seen the iconic Han Solo played by Harrison Ford, outgoing Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has suggested.
Asked by Deadline if she had any regrets from her tenure as chief of Disney's production company behind Star Wars, Kennedy said she had belatedly realized that "you cannot replace Han Solo, at least right now."
Solo: A Star Wars Story launched in 2018, just three years after Harrison Ford reprised his role as legendary scoundrel Han Solo in Star Wars Episode 7: The Force Awakens. (Ford would then cameo in the role one final time in 2019's Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker.)
Despite positive reviews, Solo was a commercial flop, earning just $393 million back on a budget of at least $275 million. In comparison, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story earned $1.05 billion at the box office, against a budget of between $200-280 million.
Solo's status as a box office bomb immediately froze Lucasfilm's plans for more standalone Star Wars films — and other continuations in general. Indeed, this year's big screen Disney+ spin-off The Mandalorian and Grogu will be the first Star Wars movie to launch since the divisive Rise of Skywalker, following a gap of seven years.
"I don't really have any regrets," Kennedy said, reflecting on her time at the top of Lucasfilm. "Well, maybe a bit of regret about Solo: A Star Wars Story," she continued. "I brought [screenwriter] Larry Kasdan in on, and we were so excited about that idea. And then when you're into something and you realize fundamentally, conceptually, you cannot replace Han Solo, at least right now.
"As wonderful as Alden Ehrenreich was," Kennedy added, "and he really was good, and is a wonderful actor, we put him in an impossible situation. And once you're in it and once you're committed, you've got to carry on. I think I have a bit of regret about that, but not about the moviemaking and filmmaking. I don't have regrets about that. I just think that conceptually, we did it too soon."
As part of the same interview, Kennedy listed out a swathe of other upcoming Star Wars projects she had overseen during her tenure, though many have now been canned or placed on the back burner. One of these is the long-gestating Solo: A Star Wars Story spin-off centering on Donald Glover's incarnation of Lando — who clearly is believed to have had an easier time of things than Ehrenreich's attempt at Han Solo.
Speaking during the New Game+ Showcase 2026 earlier this month, Gerighty said: “So, The Division 3 is in production, right? This is not a secret. It's been announced. It's shaping up to be a monster. I can't really say anything more than that. But this is, within these walls in Massive, we are working extremely hard on something that I think will be as big an impact as Division 1 was.”
He then went on to enthuse about other The Division projects in the works at Massive Entertainment, which he has now left for fellow Swedish studio DICE.
“It's time for me to hang up my go bag (keeping the watch) as I go on another grand adventure,” Gerighty said. “The Division future burns bright, and I can't wait for you to discover what the teams have been working on. Long live The Division and Godspeed!”
Two months ago, Massive Entertainment introduced what it called a "voluntary career transition program," (the studio asked its staff to volunteer to be laid off) as part of a move to focus on The Division franchise and its Snowdrop game engine. It came as part of significant restructuring at Ubisoft that has seen multiple studio closures and rounds of layoffs. Massive Entertainment's Star Wars Outlaws, released in 2024, was a big sales disappointment for Ubisoft, despite significant development and marketing costs. Julian Gerighty was Outlaws' co-director.
In a social media post, Massive Entertainment told The Division fans not to worry about Gerighty's departure, saying the teams who built The Division with him remain.
Once an Agent, always an Agent. We’re thankful for everything you gave this universe. You’ll always be part of it. Good luck at @EA_DICE, @jgerighty 🧡 pic.twitter.com/QlzuV4XtVV
— Massive Entertainment - A Ubisoft Studio 🎮 (@UbiMassive) January 16, 2026
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
LG's White-OLED technology (WOLED) has been improving for years, each iteration boosting output, efficiency, and color volume. And while 2025's C5 doesn't get LG's new Primary RGB Tandem tech from the flagship G5, it still boasts incremental improvements to peak and overall brightness. My measurements confirm: the C5’s separate RGB primaries generate excellent DCI-P3 coverage, real HDR content hits 1050 nits, and we get an impressive 290 nits fullscreen white. Otherwise the C5 looks a lot like last generation’s C4: same premium build quality, same inputs and full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 support, 144 Hz max refresh rate with G-Sync/FreeSync. All this to say that the C5 continues to deliver a fantastic gaming TV experience.
Incremental improvements are, of course, always welcome, but LG might be falling behind the QD-OLED competition. At the 65" size, the C5 and Samsung's S90F are now matched at $1400 (a great deal for each), and despite the C5 being a remarkable performer for gaming and movies, Samsung's S90F is just that little bit better.
LG C5 – Setup, Design, and First Impressions
Whether on a TV stand or a deep desk, I really like the look of the C5. I received the 55" version for review, and the brushed aluminum and faux marbling on the rear of the display works for me. And with the TV off, the glossy, purple-black screen looks like some sort of magical mirror. (More on that AR coating later.) LG keeps the outer, OLED portion of the display reasonably thick – 6 mm – so it doesn't feel as delicate as Samsung's S90F, which I thought would snap every time I touched it. The flimsy plastic cover plate and cable guide seem a bit out of place on the otherwise premium design. That plate also covers the permanently affixed power cable, an odd choice; other brands opt for a detachable cable.
Assembling the C5 on its stand, I hate to admit, was a bit of a struggle. In retrospect, I realize now that the backplate of the stand screws into the stand stand, which screws into the screen, but LG's manual is nigh inscrutable. Because the parts don't look anything like a traditional stand, we're tasked with assembling rectangles with other rectangles, flipping them over and screwing a thing into a thing that doesn't really seem like it belongs. Once in, though, I found hoisting and handling the 55" version substantially easier than any of the 65" televisions I've previously reviewed. The screen stays fairly stable with minimal wobble even with some aggressive keyboard typing, but if you’re going to move your stand/table with the C5 still on it, I’d suggest keeping a hand on the top of the screen.
For connectivity, all four HDMI 2.1 ports are full bandwidth, so 120/144 Hz is supported on every input. There's a cluster of three USB ports, ethernet, optical SPDIF, and RF antenna. Interestingly, there's no headphone jack, which is a feature I quite miss, although LG does support Bluetooth headphones.
Interacting with the TV: webOS and the Remote Control
Shortly before this review was released, my colleague Jaron Schneider reviewed LG’s flagship G5 model, one step up from the C5. In that review, he was miffed by LG’s backward “progress” with webOS and the G5’s remote. I, independently, echo that sentiment for the C5. It’s hard to say exactly whether LG’s webOS is more or less frustrating than Tizen (read my Samsung S90F review for details), but both have the blood-boiling sluggishness that screams low-end mobile phone. And yes, just like in Tizen, webOS throws up a loading throbber on the screen when accessing the picture menu, or going to the home screen, or doing just about anything.
Once in the Home menu, accessing apps like Netflix or Apple TV is straightforward. LG’s magic remote works with motion control, but I found myself constantly selecting the wrong option or mis-clicking because of the force needed to press in the scroll wheel. You can turn this off, but the menus don’t seem designed for standard D-pad control. For example, the app list, likely the thing you’ll be using most on the home screen, is just a long horizontal band of weirdly small tiles. It’s a really poor use of the screen’s space.
Jaron was also baffled, correctly I might add, by the decision to remove the input selection button from the remote. LG’s Home screen only shows one recent input, your latest, so it’s only good for getting back to where you were. Switching inputs proper now means pulling up the slow-loading Home Hub, selecting the input, waiting for the preview to show up (while white balance and other picture settings load in), and then clicking again to load. There’s no reason any of this should be difficult.
Hisense’s U8QG, using Google TV, is a pleasure to use in comparison: pared back, fluid, fast, and easy to navigate.
Sound
We still include a section on sound because it is important that manufacturers ship TVs with a usable audio solution; not everyone will have a surround sound setup or a soundbar, although that’s definitely our recommendation. TVs simply don’t have the form factor necessary for audio: forward facing drivers for stereo imaging and cabinet volume for deep bass. (There’s a reason our top pick, Samsung’s HW-Q990F, includes a subwoofer.) The C5 isn’t as thin as Samsung’s S90F, so LG does have some room in the chassis to play with, but the results aren’t amazing, even with our generally low expectations.
Music on the C5 sounds thin; it’s all mid-bass and treble. The down-firing stereo speakers do a good job, though, of keeping dialogue and voices intelligible – better than aiming the speakers at the rear wall, which has the opposite effect. At higher volumes, the sound doesn’t really improve, but at least there’s not any scratchiness, rattling, or obvious distortion coming from driver over-excursion.
Reflection Handling and Viewing Angles
Given that the C5 can't quite reach the fullscreen brightness of backlit LCDs, it's important that the screen coating is good. I really like LG's solution here: glossy for clarity, but with a very good AR coating which does an impressive job of attenuating reflections, giving them a deep purple hue. The shot below gives a good comparison: the C5 (on the left) against Hisense's U65QF, both against an overcast sky. Don't mind the white balance on the C5 (this was before calibration), but even with a roughly 2x brighter panel, reflections on the U65QF can completely obliterate the visibility of scenes, evidenced by this relatively bright hallway shot from Severance.
I don't want to pick on the U65QF too much since it's less than half the cost of the C5. So what about more similarly priced competition like Samsung's S90F or Hisense's U8QG?
The image above shows a comparison of how some of our tested TVs handle reflections. I take a shot, using the exact same exposure, of the reflection of a compact fluorescent bulb for each screen. Samsung's S90F is basically as good as it gets for reflections, followed closely by Hisense's U8QG. The C5 isn't quite on that level; reflections are still a bit too bright, and the purple halo is a little distracting.
I'd rank the C5 in a tie for third with Samsung’s QN90F, which is fully matte and tends to diffuse reflections over a larger area. I generally prefer glossy screens, but I think there's a large element of personal preference here.
Off-axis viewing of LG's WOLED panel is vastly better than VA LCD panels like the U8QG or TCL's QM8K. Emissive displays like OLEDs can generally maintain their brightness, contrast, and white balance at shockingly large angles off-axis, whereas VA panels tend to fall off in all those metrics starting around 20 degrees. This is important if you're sitting close to the screen, or if you want everyone on your couch to see the same picture. OLEDs also don't have the viewing-angle dependent gamma shift for dark colors, which is a major plus for close viewing or watching any dark content.
I have the 55" version of the C5 in for review, and I've found that it's actually a pretty decent desktop "monitor" if you have a deep enough desk. But sitting right in front of it, one thing immediately stuck out to me: the C5's picture has a fairly strong green push off axis.
The image above shows a wide-angle closeup of the LG, with the color temp calibrated and dialed in to a standard 6500K, roughly what I see sitting here at my desk. I've masked off the edges of the photo with the same color as the center of the screen, and it's apparent that the periphery goes quite green. I'll get into calibration soon, but each of LG's "accurate" picture modes (ISF, FILMMAKER, etc.) are too red out-of-box. This might have been an effort to balance the color across the panel for different viewers, who, if they were off to the side, would be getting a picture that's too green instead.
It's not the end of the world, but it's something to keep in mind if you intend to use the screen up close or as a PC monitor. Interestingly, Samsung's QD-OLED S90F doesn't have this problem at all.
Color, Calibration, and SDR
I'm not sure if LG's addition of a 4th, white, subpixel to goose OLED brightness made engineering the C5's color, white balance, and gamma performance 33% more difficult, but I don't envy the engineers who had that task. The white subpixel adds another spectral component, different from but also overlapping the standard RGB primaries.
The image above shows the difference; the spectrum at the top next to the mercury reference shows the C5's white output, which is quite different from the RGB primaries below. The wavelength and purity (or separation) of the RGB primaries is what gives the C5 excellent coverage of the DCI-P3 space, extending the points of its gamut triangle to nearly perfect alignment.
I'm a sucker for deep, vibrant colors, so I prefer displays that extend beyond P3 (like the Samsung S90F or U8QG, both using quantum dots), but I can't really complain about LG's accuracy here.
It's important that the quality of a TV's "Game" mode doesn't take a back seat to the movie modes. Without the need for heavy processing like motion smoothing, noise reduction, or super resolution, I expect game modes to have color and gamma performance at nearly the same level of their best film-style picture modes. In the C5's case, my first instinct was to test LG's "Game Optimizer" mode. Confusingly, LG opts to use "Game Optimizer" for two different purposes. The first is very important: access to gaming features like the display's max refresh rate of 144 Hz, VRR with G-SYNC or FreeSync, ALLM, etc. The second is the Game Optimizer Picture Mode, which enables access to wildly inaccurate profiles like RPG, RTS, and FPS, which have been standard fare in PC monitors for ages.
Happily, LG gives us the option to keep Game Optimizer on without using its picture mode. I found ISF Bright and FILMMAKER give the best, most accurate default settings. Both settings, though, have trouble tracking 2.2 gamma and are far too red, which I mentioned earlier. I had to dial red all the way down to -16 to reach 6500K. Dark Detail also needs to be increased, otherwise near-black is badly clipped. Dark detail being lost is a problem in HDR as well, which I’ll get to later.
In SDR, LG controls the ABL (Automatic Brightness Limiting) behavior of the C5 with the Contrast setting. Higher contrast will allow for higher SDR peak brightness on smaller windows, but the display will more aggressively dim the screen, especially when displaying PC-style content. At a setting of 100, I measured the C5 hitting 450 nits up to a 50% window, which is excellent, but fullscreen brightness fell to only 220 nits. Dropping contrast down to 70 levels off the display to a flat 290 nits – good for a consistent, ABL-free experience for PC use. LG’s default of 85 strikes a balance between these:
SDR brightness isn’t really a strong suite for the C5. Even with a good AR coating, LG can’t overcome a 2x or 3x brightness deficit to more potent FALD backlit LCDs. Most content is still SDR, so if you’re looking for a television for a bright room, something like Hisense’s U8QG is a much better choice.
HDR
HDR on an OLED, whether that's LG's WOLED C5 or Samsung's QD-OLED S90F, hits different than FALD backlit LCDs. I really liked the HDR experience on Hisense's U8QG, but with "only" 2048 zones, it simply can't compete at generating the extreme local contrast that 8.3 million individually controlled pixels can achieve.
I measured the C5 blasting around 1060 nits at a 10% window size in HDR. Not quite at the level of the S90F, but very good. In games that are mastered to take advantage of this, Cyberpunk 2077 being an excellent example, the experience is astonishing. Every neon light at Lizzy's is punchy, brilliant, and deeply colorful. In a dark room, the performance is hands-down superior to LCD.
But my dark room caveat is an important one due to LG's EOTF tracking in HDR, which is simply too dark. In both FILMMAKER and ISF picture modes, across the critical "dark" region for HDR target luminance, from a very dark 0.05 nits to about 10 nits (which is actually brighter than you'd expect), LG has missed the mark... by a lot, presenting a contrasty, but crushed and inaccurate image. My EOTF tracking measurements for both 2% and 10% window sizes show just how off the C5 is. And this is a log scale! My colorimeter wasn't even able to measure anything at the 0.05 and 0.1 nit levels.
Perhaps this was intentional – a way to differentiate LG's OLED offerings against LCD competition – but it causes real problems when gaming or watching movies. When watching The Gorge on Apple TV, at night with no room lights, I had trouble making out what was happening in almost every nighttime scene. I had a similar problem when rewatching Until Dawn on Netflix. It's clear that no one would master content this way. Hisense's U8QG does a much better job of accurate EOTF tracking; the scene above with Anya Taylor-Joy's character crouched in a sniper position is intentionally dark, mostly below 1 nit, but detail is visible on the Hisense. On the C5, the frame is basically a floating face in a sea of black. LG does offer a "Dark Detail" adjustment, but even at its max of +3, tracking is still too dark.
For both dark room and HDR performance in general, Samsung's S90F is a better display than the C5: brighter highlights and more accurate EOTF tracking.
Gaming on the LG C5
I was sent the 55" version of the C5 right in the middle of my playthrough of The Outer Worlds 2, so I played the latter half of the game on the C5. In HDR, the game looks incredible – tons of fine detail, bright highlights, and super colorful – and while performance on my aging 3060 Ti isn't the best in UE5 games, the C5 handles motion well even at lower framerates. The images I picked for this review show off some scenes from TOW2 and Cyberpunk 2077, where 1000 nit highlights really contrast against the dark remainder of the frame. On LCD, dark content can smear in motion, but OLED stays sample-and-hold perfect.
In fact, the C5 is right up there with the S90F for gaming: amazing performance throughout the VRR range, OLED near-instant response times, and LG's Game Optimizer mode has very low input lag at 144, 120, and 60 Hz.
Response times for the C5 are basically perfect, topping the RT chart along with another OLED: Samsung’s S90F. Averaged across 60 Hz, 120 Hz, and the C5’s max of 144 Hz, I measured gamma-corrected response times at about 0.4 ms, but that comes from a few stragglers; most responses are faster than 200 microseconds. This means that the display is nearly a perfect sample-and-hold limited device, so the only way to reduce motion blur further is to increase refresh rates. A max refresh rate of 144 Hz is good, but I'd still like to see this being pushed out more. 240 Hz at 4K is something that remains limited to the best gaming monitors, as even the more expensive TV models (LG G5 or Samsung S95F) from both brands top out at 165 Hz.
The group of VA panel LCDs is more than an order of magnitude slower, and those averages include many responses in the 30 ms range, which is why VA’s tend to have a hard time showing motion without smearing/trailing, especially in dark scenes.
Most of the C5’s transitions look like the graphs above: essentially a square wave response rising or falling. But the display does overshoot the target occasionally. For the black to RGB 223 transition, the C5 plateaus to RGB 234 in 165 microseconds before landing back at the target after one 144 Hz frame. Similarly, falling from white to RGB 95, the C5 drops a little too much. The sharp, periodic dips each frame aren’t visible, but the overshoot is, leading to a bit of “inverse ghosting.” That said, unless you go out of your way to look for it, it’s not a major problem.
I take pursuit shots of BlurBusters’ TestUFO at a very fast 1920 pixels per second; it's important, though, to use higher speeds to better differentiate the response time behavior of displays as their response times get quicker and quicker. But as mentioned before, there's nothing to be really concerned about here: no smearing, trailing, or excessive overshoot. Other than the differing subpixel layout, it’d be hard to tell the C5 from the S90F.
LG’s Game Optimizer mode (not the picture mode) reduces latency down to excellent levels for all refresh rates. At 144 Hz and 120 Hz, input lag was about 1.1 milliseconds, a fantastic result. 60 Hz latency is also the best of the bunch tested so far: only 4.5 ms. Without GO turned on, 144 Hz lag is still good, but it gets progressively worse as the refresh rate drops (~22 ms at 60 Hz), and you can definitely feel it when gaming with a mouse. Game Optimizer doesn’t lock you into any particular picture mode, so I’d suggest keeping it on.
I had an absolute blast gaming on the C5. For pure gaming performance, OLED is simply superior to VA LCDs. Yes, FALD LCDs can throw more brightness at you, but the instant response, the extreme local contrast of 8.3 million “zones,” and excellent viewing angles makes OLED the best choice for gamers. Cyberpunk’s HDR implementation is so good that I had to wrestle myself away from just playing the game in order to take photos.
VRR Flicker
All OLED panels are susceptible to VRR flicker, and the C5 is no exception. Large and erratic frame time swings can cause the screen to rapidly brighten and darken; the cause seems to be a slightly different near-black gamma response at different framerates. The shot below compares a scene from Cyberpunk 2077 at 30 and 144 fps. Unless the screen is actively flickering, it’s pretty hard to notice this shift in real content; I chose this scene because it was particularly illustrative of the difference.
Interestingly, the gamma shift doesn’t seem to happen with the white subpixel, e.g. measuring a pure grayscale test patch didn’t show much gamma difference at any framerate. That particular AC unit and the ceiling seem to have the right mix of red and green to excite the shift. I’ll need to investigate this more.
At 30 fps, RGB values below about 30 are quite a bit darker than they should be; the C5 already has trouble with crushed detail, but the lower framerate causes even more deviation from the 2.2 gamma target, giving the picture a very different look.
That said, I didn’t have much flickering in hours and hours of play time in Cyberpunk or The Outer Worlds 2; keeping a smooth-ish, consistent framerate is key. Most of the flickering was isolated to loading screens in TOW2.
One additional thing I noticed at lower framerates was that the C5’s picture has a visible stairstep pattern. This is absolutely not a problem if you’re sitting at normal couch distances, but I wanted to mention it for PC folks and as a comparison to Samsung’s QD-OLED S90F, where I didn’t notice any unusual pixel behavior.
The Competition
If you're willing to make the jump to OLED, but still have some budget constraints, I wouldn't consider anything other than LG's C5 or Samsung's S90F, both now matched at around $1400. Yes, the one-tier-down B5 and S85F exist at $1000, but their fullscreen brightness performance is decidedly last-gen, and very dim; at that price, you can get a FALD LCD that’s 5x brighter.
Performance-wise, both are top tier. For gaming in rooms where you can control the ambient light, both make excellent choices, but I think the winner here is the S90F: brighter HDR highlights, better HDR EOTF tracking (the C5 is too dark!), and it’s better off-axis. The S90F isn’t worlds better, but it is better. The S90F won our Best Gaming TV of 2025, and that still stands.
If you need major brightness, though, the Hisense U8QG is our pick for bright rooms. Pixel response times are slower than OLED, of course, and you lose the amazing viewing angles, but Hisense has done a remarkably good job of delivering superb brightness while controlling blooming/haloing.
After a few quiet months, Magic: The Gathering is bringing back Commander Decks with Lorwyn Eclipsed.
The first set of a packed 2026 schedule, we’re getting the first precons for the EDH format since Edge of Eternities (which, to their credit, were great).
With Wizards of the Coast revealing the full decklists for both, should you pick one up? Or both? Or skip them entirely in favor of the five-color Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one arriving in March? Let’s dig in.
Despite that, our Commander, Ashling, the Limitless, is a red card that makes it easier to bring an Elemental into play, albeit to be sacrificed if you don’t cough up the required mana.
From a gameplay perspective, I can see it being fun, particularly with Mass of Mysteries giving your Elementals the Myriad keyword, but the reprint value is pretty solid, too - with some caveats.
Omnath, Locus of the Roil is currently going for $12 or so, while Endurance isn’t far behind. The big draw is likely to be Cream of the Crop, which, to my knowledge, hasn’t been reprinted in a long, long time (maybe ever).
It’s going for a decent chunk of change (around $24 and upwards), but therein lies the rub - as soon as these decks hit shelves, that price will plummet. So while you’re getting some value, it’ll be gone as quickly as you can say Timeless Lotus - another card which will likely see the same result.
Expect the deck to offer around $130 in value, but that’ll drop to around $100 within a fortnight it seems.
That’s not to say it won’t be fun to play, but as an investment, I’d only recommend buying it if you need specific cards or just want to play with it (imagine that!).
Blight Curse
From a rainbow of colors to the dreariness of -1/-1 counters, Blight Curse is a little bit spooky in truth.
Auntie Ool is all about Blighting creatures to trigger opponents to lose life or to give you card advantage, but the backup commander, The Reaper, King No More is a 3/3 scarecrow that turns your opponents’ cards into yours if you kill them with -1/-1 counters.
With that in mind, I’d be leaning into the sheer chaos of The Reaper, but one of the biggest draws here is the Necroskitter. It essentially mimics The Reaper’s ability, bringing creatures to your side of the board, and is worth around $30. Will that drop? Yes, for sure, from the moment this deck hits shelves.
Other decent reprints here include Tree of Perdition, Chimil, the Inner Sun, and Midnight Banshee.
Again, the reprint value is likely to be around $130 again, but you’re losing a chunk of that with Necroskitter. And yet, I still think this is the better deck of the two.
Which One Should You Pick?
First up, a caveat: I’ve put links on this page to pick these up, because, well, that’s my job, but if you give it a few weeks, I reckon the pricing will settle down as more decks are printed. You shouldn’t be paying too much over the odds for these decks. Keep an eye on TCGplayer as well, as the market price on these should come down comfortably post release.
With that said, I think each inhabits a unique design space for Magic: The Gathering. I’ve been buying precons to upgrade, take apart, or just play out of the box for a few years, and both of these are pretty unique.
I’m particularly excited about Blight Curse as a way to slowly grind an opponent’s game plan to a halt, potentially flipping cards to your side of the field, while Dance of the Elements, while exciting, is likely to lead to some wild plays.
The choice is yours, of course, but I really don’t think you can go wrong with either.
Lloyd Coombes is an experienced freelancer in tech, gaming and fitness seen at Polygon, Eurogamer, Macworld, TechRadar and many more. He's a big fan of Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games, much to his wife's dismay.
Sony is set to release the Hyperpop Collection of PlayStation 5 accessories, bringing eye-popping new colors to PS5 console covers and DualSense controllers. The colors in question are bright hues of red, green, and blue, all of which fade to black toward the top of the item in question. The console covers cost $74.99, while the controllers cost $84.99. All are available to preorder now and will launch on March 12 (see the controllers at Amazon and the console covers at PS Direct).
As with all new PS5 controller and console cover releases, the colors have been given catchy names. They’re Techno Red, Remix Green, and Rhythm Blue. Leo Cardoso of the design team told PlayStation Blog, "We’re cranking the volume all the way up with a collection that doesn’t just stand out, it takes over the room. Inspired by the glow of the RGB lights of your impressive gaming setups, these new colors go LOUD in the best possible way."
Sae Kobayashi, another designer behind the collection, said, “A seamless gradient wraps around the front and back of the DualSense, finished in a high-gloss coat that makes the colors POP more than ever. The console covers are also getting the same glow-up, featuring a subtle hint of transparency.”
If you take a look at the slideshow above, you can see the glossy sheen. No matte finish here. These new colors might not be for everyone, but they’re sure to appeal to some PS5 owners. They're some of the boldest colors Sony has ever released.
Anyone who's getting tired of their current controller selection and is interested in potential alternate color schemes for their gaming accessories, check out our look back on every PS5 DualSense controller ever released, in chronological order.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO of Netflix, has committed to a 45-day window for theatrical movie releases once its $82.7 billion deal for Warner Bros. goes through.
Earlier this month, Deadline reported that Netflix “have been proponents of a 17-day window which would steamroll the theatrical business.”
However, in a new interview with The New York Times, Sarandos pushed back on the widespread belief that Netflix’s deal for Warner Bros. will spell disaster for theaters and moviegoing, insisting Hollywood misunderstands what it’s trying to achieve.
“The general economics of the theatrical business were more positive than we had seen and we had modeled for ourselves,” Sarandos said of Warner Bros.’s movie arm. “It’s a healthy, profitable business for them. We weren’t in that business not because we hated it. We weren’t in that business because our business was doing so well.
“I understand that folks are emotional about it because they love it and they don’t want it to go away. And they think that we’ve been doing things to make it go away. We haven’t.”
At this point in the interview, Sarandos committed to the 45-day window.
“When this deal closes, we will own a theatrical distribution engine that is phenomenal and produces billions of dollars of theatrical revenue that we don’t want to put at risk. We will run that business largely like it is today, with 45-day windows. I’m giving you a hard number. If we’re going to be in the theatrical business, and we are, we’re competitive people — we want to win. I want to win opening weekend. I want to win box office.”
Netflix’s decision here could have an enormous impact on everything from James Gunn's DC Universe movie, Man of Tomorrow (July 9, 2027), to The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum (December 17, 2027). Then there's Matt Reeves' The Batman: Part 2, which is due out October 1, 2027, and Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, due out March 26, 2027.
And it’s worth pointing out that Sarandos hasn’t committed to a 45-day window forever. Indeed, in a financial call discussing the deal last year, Sarandos said Netflix would continue to release Warner Bros. movies in theaters for now, though expected theatrical release windows to shorten over time to become "more user friendly."
"We've released about 30 films into theaters this year, so it's not like we have got this opposition to movies into theaters," Sarandos said at the time. "My pushback has been mostly in the fact of the long, exclusive windows that we don't think are that user friendly."
"I wouldn't look at this as a change in approach for Netflix movies, or for Warner movies for that matter," Sarandos continued. "I think over time the windows will evolve to be much more consumer friendly, to be able to meet the audience where they are, quicker. All those things we'd like to do. But I'd say right now you should count on everything that is planned as going to the theaters through Warner Bros., will continue to go to the theaters through Warner Bros."
In the New York Times interview, Sarandos was challenged on his much-quoted dismissal of cinemagoing as an “outmoded idea.” He clarified that he said going to the theater was outmoded “for some."
“I mean, like the town that Sinners is supposed to be set in does not have a movie theater there,” he said. “For those folks, it’s certainly outmoded. You’re not going to get in the car and go to the next town to go see a movie. But my daughter lives in Manhattan. She could walk to six multiplexes, and she’s in the theaters twice a week. Not outmoded for her at all.”
Sarandos also insisted that the idea of Netflix as competition for going to the theater is a myth, adding that people will leave the house to go to the movies if they’re truly excited about a film.
“When you go out to see a movie in the theater, if it was a good movie, when you come home, the first thing you want to do is watch another movie,” he said. “If anything, I think it helps, you know, encourage the love of films.
“I did not get in this business to hurt the theatrical business. I got into this business to help consumers, to help movie fans.”
The future of cinemagoing is top of mind as 2026 kicks off, with Netflix’s Warner Bros. deal waiting in the wings. Meanwhile, box office revenue is struggling, with even Marvel movies — previously guaranteed hits — having trouble getting fans into theaters. The big question right now is, are we witnessing the beginning of the end of going to the cinema?
Hollywood legend Leonardo DiCaprio recently expressed concern about the future of cinemagoing, asking whether it would become a niche pursuit. In an interview with The Sunday Times, the Titanic, Inception, and The Wolf of Wall Street star wondered whether “people still have the appetite” for theaters, and, if not, whether they might “become silos — like jazz bars.”
Meanwhile, Avatar director James Cameron has said Netflix buying Warner Bros. would be a “disaster.”
“Sorry, Ted [Sarandos], but geez,” he said on The Town podcast ahead of the launch of Avatar: Fire and Ash. “Sarandos has gone on the record saying theatrical films are dead. ‘Theatrical is dead. Quote, unquote.’” Indeed, Cameron remains unconvinced that Netflix would truly commit to any meaningful theatrical distribution if it expanded. “It’s sucker bait," he said. "‘We’ll put the movie out for a week or 10 days. We’ll qualify for Oscar consideration.’ See, I think that’s fundamentally rotten to the core. A movie should be made as a movie for theatrical, and the Academy Awards mean nothing to me if they don’t mean theatrical. I think they’ve been co-opted, and I think it’s horrific.”
That said, Cameron isn't opposed to Netflix playing the game if it actually, well, plays the game. “They should be allowed to compete if they put the movie out for a meaningful release in 2,000 theaters for a month,” Cameron noted.
Photo by Vincent Feuray / Hans Lucas / AFP via Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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