It’s officially release day for action RPG Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE, which puts you in control of the limitless potential of series star Sung Jinwoo. It’s available now on Steam and Xbox PC.

The game takes place in the world of the globally popular Solo Leveling franchise, where supernaturally powerful Hunters fight to protect humanity from invading monsters. Most Hunters have fixed power levels, but Sung Jinwoo is unique: he can level up. And he’s on a mission to become the world’s strongest Hunter and the Ultimate Monarch of Shadows.

You can guide him through that mission in Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE’s Story Mode, which includes an adaptation of the original story as well as new adventures that are unique to the game. You can customize his appearance, abilities, and play style through the course of the story.

His biggest strength is his versatility. He can learn just about anything and is constantly growing and evolving. Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE puts you in charge of determining that growth, including four initial job choices and a skill tree that allows for flexibility in creating your own playstyle.

He can wield several different types of weapons, and you’re able to swap between them on the fly to chain attacks together and build combos. There are also timing-based parries and dodges you can use to cancel or avoid damage and then unleash counterattacks to keep the pace of combat flowing.

Your play style will change depending on the combination of weapons and skills you choose, giving you the opportunity to test a lot of different styles and seeing what suits you. And by charging the Monarch’s Awakening gauge, Sung Jinwoo can transform into his Shadow Monarch form, which has a completely different set of skills to use against enemies.

Sung Jinwoo might be the protagonist, but he’s not the only character you can play as. You’ll recruit other Hunters that fans of the Solo Leveling series will recognize, each with their own personalities and powers, and you can play as them in certain Hunter dungeons. You can also join up to three friends in co-op raids that will see you face off with some of the toughest commanders from the series. In those raids, you can play as either Jinwoo or one of the other available Hunters, and they all have their own skill set and attack patterns to master.

The Story Mode and multiplayer content of Solo Leveling: ARISE OVERDRIVE are both included in the base purchase price of $39.99, which is available now in full on Steam and Xbox PC. The game is also scheduled for release on consoles in 2026. For the latest news and updates, you can check out the game’s official website or follow it on Twitter, Facebook, Discord, and YouTube.

Comedy legend Eddie Murphy has been a fan favorite actor for decades now — but even he has some regrets about films he wishes he'd starred in, ones that could’ve made him even more beloved than he was at the height of his career.

“Yeah, there’s a couple of movies,” he told the Associated Press in a recent interview where he addressed movies he wished he’d done. “Ghostbusters, I was supposed to do Ghostbusters. Didn’t do that. And Rush Hour. Didn’t do that. Oh, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Those are my big three ‘wish I would have done’ movies. They were huge giant hits.”

HBO Max has officially unveiled its Black Friday deal for 2025, and despite a new round of price hikes, it’s actually better than last year’s. In fact, it’s pretty much the best Black Friday streaming deal I’ve seen so far.

From now until December 1, you can get 12 months of HBO Max with ads at the price of $2.99/month. The downside is definitely those ads, which are pretty much par for the course for Black Friday discounts. The upside is the deal is available to both new and returning subscribers, so you won’t have to do any “new e-mail address” trickery if you’ve had an account before.

Get HBO Max for 2.99/mo for 12 Months

Ubisoft has confirmed Attack on Titan as the next big brand crossover coming to Assassin's Creed Shadows, with a free story quest and paid cosmetics arriving this week.

From tomorrow, November 24, players will be able to take on a new free mission and purchase a series of in-game items. But you'll need to act quickly, as the Attack on Titan mission content will only be live until December 22.

Hit anime media franchise Attack on Titan is the second crossover for Assassin's Creed Shadows following the game's earlier Dead by Daylight collaboration. Similarly, that offered up a simple mission (which lasted around 15 minutes) and then let you pay to adorn Shadows' main characters in themed cosmetics, if you so chose.

A series of other, non-crossover story missions have also been added to Shadows for free since launch, one of which starred Critical Role's Robbie Daymond as a new character you can recruit as an ally. Another update, which arrived in late September, immortalized a fan's beloved pet cat. Fans expect Ubisoft to continue supporting Shadows with further content through 2026, as it also prepares its long-awaited (but still unannounced) Assassin's Creed: Black Flag remake.

Last week, Ubisoft celebrated its latest set of financial results which it said had been driven by a "strong performance" for the Assassin's Creed franchise. But while there was an update on how many people had played 2023's Assassin's Creed Mirage, Ubisoft gave no further update on how Shadows has sold. Back in July, Ubisoft said Shadows had surpassed 5 million players, and that its performance had been in line with expectations.

Assassin's Creed Shadows is currently half price in Amazon's Black Friday sale.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Bethany Weaver, the British actress briefly glimpsed as Dorothy in Wicked: For Good, has shared behind-the-scenes photos that fully reveal her in costume for the first time.

Wicked: For Good goes to great lengths to keep Weaver's face obscured and her character off-screen for all but a few seconds of its more than two-hour runtime. As in the original musical, Dorothy's biggest moment — where she douses Elphaba with water, seemingly killing her — is shown just in silhouette form.

But, of course, Wicked: For Good needed to cast someone to portray the character, and she was recently revealed as 30-year-old unknown actress and pilates teacher Bethany Weaver, who has also been kept squarely out of the limelight — until now.

In a fresh post on Instagram, Weaver finally acknowledged her role as Dorothy and thanked some of her fellow co-stars, including Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Omari Bernard and Oscar, the dog who plays Toto.

"What an honour it has been to walk on the yellow brick road with my fellow Witch Hunters," Weaver wrote. "A huge thank you to the best film maker of all time Jon M Chu for choosing me to be your Dorothy in this wonderfully wicked universe called Oz.

"This has been a life changing experience, it's changed me in so many ways and most importantly, for good. It's been an honor to carry the legacy of the brilliant women before me who have stepped into these shoes, and embarked on the yellow brick road. I hope I have made them proud."

Accompanying the post are a series of photos that finally show Weaver's face while portraying Dorothy. Curiously, there's also a short video clip that appears to show a scene from the film on a video monitor, where Weaver's face was fully included. Was this cut? Or was it filmed without the intention of never being included?

Speaking about the deliberate decision to keep Dorothy as anonymous as possible, Wicked director Jon M Chu previously said that it had been a conscious effort to not distract audiences from the movie's main plot with the introduction of the Wizard of Oz's star, who only acts as a background character to Wicked's central story of Elphaba and Glinda. Additionally, Chu had not wanted the movie to replace other instances of the character's portrayal — such as the legendary 1939 performance of Judy Garland.

So drastic was the decision to keep Dorothy anonmous, The Sun reported that Weaver was stopped from attending major premieres, while other cast and crew were banned from following or interacting with her on social media.

Not that Dorothy's lack of presence appears to have hurt Wicked: For Good's success. Far from it, the concluding half of Wicked's two-part story has landed as firmly as a Kansas house in Munchkinland, and already brought in $226 million globally, making it the fourth biggest opening weekend for a movie this year. That's bigger than Superman and The Fantastic Four, and behind only Lilo & Stitch, Jurassic World Rebirth, and A Minecraft Movie.

"Wicked: For Good has all of the great parts of the first movie — opulent sets, heart-wrenching songs, the perfect lead cast — and all of its problems, too," we wrote in IGN's Wicked: For Good review, awarding the film a 6/10 score.

Image credit: bethweavesx.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

The Mazinger franchise is easily one of the most popular Japanese mecha franchises ever created, and it's still going strong after several decades. Titan Comics is giving fans a new way to experience that story with a prequel graphic novel called Grendizer U: The Inception.

IGN can exclusively debut a preview of Grendizer U: The Inception, which is due in stores in March 2026. Check it out in the slideshow gallery below:

Grendizer U: The Inception is written by Go Nagai and illustrated by 8KEY. The book is adapted from the 2024 anime series Grendizer U and features a new prequel story by Tatsuto Higuchi. Here's Titan's official logline for the book:

When a UFO from the Vega Alliance arrives on Earth, humanity faces its biggest threat in an oncoming Alien invasion. But their hope arrives in another Alien, Duke Fleed, a refugee of the planet Fleed who finds his home in Japan. Duke pilots the mighty Grendizer, a weaponized Mech to fight off the Vega forces. Along with his best friend and partner Koji Kabuto, they fight to free Earth from the terror of the Vega forces.

Written by the legendary Go Nagai and illustrated by 8KEY, Grendizer: U The Inception modernizes the iconic story of the lost prince who shoulders the responsibility to protect his new home from the same Empire that destroyed his last.

Featuring a prequel story by Tatsuto Higuchi not told before, this manga is an adaptation of the anime Grendizer U.

Grendizer U: The Inception will be released on March 17, 2026. You can preorder the book from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, and Forbidden Planet in the UK.

In other comic book news, find out who dies in Marvel's One World Under Doom finale, and learn about Dark Horse's new ongoing He-Man and the Masters of the Universe series.

Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on BlueSky.

One of 2025's most popular movies, Sinners, is available for only $12.99 during Gruv's Black Friday sale. While Gruv may not be a household name, it's the digital storefront of Universal Pictures, and offers incredible prices on movies from Universal, WB, and MGM.

There are already plenty of deals on physical media this year, including the return of Amazon's buy 2, get 1 free sale on 4K movies, but Gruv quietly has some of the best deals around if you're looking to expand your movie collection.

Sinners 4K UHD for $12.99 at Gruv

In celebration of Toy Story's 30th anniversary, IGN had the chance to speak to Pete Docter, Pixar’s Chief Creative Officer, and, alongside sharing his thoughts on the true heart of the film, he shared with us why now is the perfect time for Toy Story 5 with the ever-present threat of AI and technology invading our playtime.

I spoke to Docter and others as part of a larger retrospective on Toy Story for this big milestone, and I asked him why Toy Story is still relevant today and why they chose to focus on "Toy Meets Tech" for the upcoming fifth film that is set to be released in theaters on June 19, 2026.

“I think it's especially relevant today because of the tech and how that's changed the world,” Docter told me. “I mean, we're late to the party as it's been a number of years since technology's kind of already beat toys. Look around you at a restaurant, kids are looking at their iPhones and not playing with plastic figures anymore. I'll refrain from commenting on how I feel about that, but it's definitely out there in the world, and I think it's disturbing to a lot of people. And even in the last year, AI has brought up those same kind of fears in a maybe even a larger way because it seems to threaten what makes us human.

"And I think that's ultimately what the Toy Story movies are about. They look like toys, but they’re really stories about us as human beings, what it is to be alive, and the joys, threats, and difficulties of that.”

Docter expanded on that thought elsewhere in our conversation, and he recalled a very pivotal moment when he was working on the original film to help reinforce his point.

“One of the first shots that I animated was when Woody gets shoved off the bed and Buzz Lightyear lands there, and then all the kids run out and Woody crawls out from under the bed, and he's like, ‘uh.. uh… nothing… it was a mistake. Too much cake and ice cream.’ As I was analyzing it, I was like, ‘What is Woody thinking? What's he feeling right now?’ And it was jealousy. It was that sense of, I used to take it for granted that I was the top dog, and now there's some other guy, but I'm not going to show anybody that. And I realized there have been so many times in my life where I've felt the same thing.

“And so first of all, I put that into the shot, but I also realized that this is what this movie is about; it’s this emergence of jealousy that this toy feels like he's the most important thing in the world. But in the long run, the sort of selflessness of that is recognizing that his jealousy is born of love, that his jealousy is born of really caring for this kid, and if that's really the ultimate goal, then self-sacrifice, whatever it takes…I just feel like that's a really beautiful arc, and it was very relatable.”

That was the real theme of my conversation with Docter and the others I spoke to for this retrospective, that these films are all about toys and fantastical adventures, but they are ultimately about us. We live in a day and age where AI software can create a film in seconds, but maybe that's not the reason we as humans are drawn to stories. Perhaps it is something deeper.

“I just want the world to remember it was made by people,” Docter said when I asked him how he wanted people to look back on Toy Story. “Every detail in the film has some meaning for someone, either because that's what the character's feeling, or even just personal stuff. Hannah was named after a family friend of ours, or when Buzz is drunk after losing his arm, he's talking about being Mrs. Nesbit. That was my sister's second-grade teacher! So, everything is just connected to the people who made it. I think a lot of times people figure these things are,” and he pretends he is a robot typing into a prompt when he says, “Make…film… enter!” It doesn't work that way. It's made using a computer, but not by computers.”

For more, check out where Toy Story ranks on our list of the best Pixar films, Toy Story 5 director Andrew Stanton's comments on the decision to make another sequel, and our breakdown of the opening scene of the upcoming film from Destination D23.

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.

Pete Docter Blogroll Image Credit: (C) Pixar Animation Studios

Black Friday deals get messy fast, especially in the games world. Retailers love to hurl half-baked offers around in the run-up to what I like to call "Black Friday proper," the day after Thanksgiving.

While there are some genuinely good deals already available, it can still get a little tricky to work out what is actually worth your time, especially if you're on a limited budget.

That's where I'm here to help. Sure, there are plenty of strong 2025 releases on offer, with big PS5 and Nintendo Switch titles in the mix, but the real gold right now is the slew of games sitting at 20 dollars or less at retailers like Amazon.

That slice of the sale is stacked with some genuine heavy hitters from across the current generation's almost five-year life cycle. If you want actual bargains, this is the bin worth digging through.

Elden Ring

Daredevil actor Charlie Cox has said that any awards he might win for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 should really be given to his character's French motion capture artist instead.

Speaking this weekend at an event in Mexico, Cox said he was "thrilled" to be recognised but believed that any credit should go to someone else: his character Gustave's motion capture artist, who had physically brought the role to life.

"Yes, I'm thrilled for this nomination," Cox acknowledged. "I've said this before and I think it's important to say: there's an amazing French actor, by the name of Maxence Cazorla, who did almost all of the motion capture for that role in that game.

@posta.entretenimiento ⭐️ #CharlieCox se fue de paseo a #LaHuasteca 😮 El protagonista de #DaredevilBornAgain compartió cómo ha sido su experiencia hasta ahora en #Monterrey y reveló cómo se siente con su reciente nominación a #TheGameAwards2025 ♬ original sound - POSTA Entretenimiento

"So any nomination or credit I get, I really have to give to him — I believe that the performance of that character is really down to him, and my voice was just part of that process."

Cox has been nominated for Best Performance at The Game Awards, as part of Clair Obscur's record-breaking 12 nods. Indeed, Cox will need to fight off competition from two of his fellow Clair Obscur co-stars, Final Fantasy 16 voice Ben Starr and Baldur's Gate 3 actress Jennifer English, who are also nominated for their work in the same game.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is also up for Best Direction, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction, Best Score and Music, Best Audio, Best Independent Game, Best Debut Independent Game and Best RPG, as well as the ceremony's coveted Game of the Year gong.

This isn't the first time that Cox has made clear he actually had very little to do with the making of Clair Obscur, despite performing the voice for one of its most prominent characters. Back in June, the actor said he felt like a "total fraud" anytime someone gushed to him about the role-playing game, and admitted he had recorded all of his lines in around four hours.

The following month, Cox was asked about Clair Obscur again and admitted he was still to play it, and needed to buy a new games console first. "I remember being in the studio and thinking, 'This is beautiful, the visuals are extraordinary,'" Cox said. "They've come a long way since Mario 64, which is probably the last computer game I played."

In IGN's 9/10 review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, we described it as a "modern RPG classic," adding: "In so many ways, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 reminded me of numerous classic and contemporary RPGs I love, but developer Sandfall truly understood why those games are special and made the pieces it borrowed its own."

Image credit: Medios y Media/Getty Images

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

While the whole month of November has basically been filled with deals this year, it's now officially Black Friday week. Already we've found numerous discounts worth checking out, especially on Apple devices. The brand new AirPods Pro 3 have been among them, dropping down to their lowest price yet of $219.99 across a variety of retailers.

This is a $29.01 discount from their usual price of $249, which is a nice little deal to jump on for these Apple earbuds. If you've had them in mind as a gift for the holidays this year for someone you know, or have just had your eye on them for yourself, now's the time to make a move on them.

AirPods Pro 3 for $219.99

Danel Craig reunites with writer-director Rian Johnson for Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, the third installment in their murder mystery-comedy franchise following Knives Out and Glass Onion.

In Wake Up Dead Man, the renowned (and always nattily attired) detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) investigates a seemingly impossible murder that has rocked a small upstate New York town. The prime suspect is a young Catholic priest, Father Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), the assistant to charismatic firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) at Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude.

Working with local police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis), Blanc doubts that Father Jud, a former boxer who turned to the cloth after a tragedy in the ring, is the true killer, casting a wider net that includes parishioners Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), aspiring politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), best-selling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott), and concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny).

Here’s what Rian Johnson and Daniel Craig recently told me about making Wake Up Dead Man and telling a sincere story about religious faith. (This interview has been edited for clarity.)

IGN: Rian, can you talk about the decision to write a story about faith and to write a character like Father Jud from that point of view? It's not ironic, you're not mocking faith.

Rian Johnson: I didn't grow up Catholic, but I grew up Protestant and I grew up very, very Christian. It was something that was really personal to me. It was a big part. My relationship with Christ was a big part of my identity when I was growing up and up through my early twenties and I'm no longer a believer, but it's something that I have a lot of very deep, complicated feelings about and it's something that was a little bit scary, the notion of, and that's what attracted us to it, I think.

The notion of actually having a real conversation about faith that wasn't reductive or didactic, but was actually kind of talking about it in the context of a big, entertaining, fun, murder mystery, that's really meant as a big tent thing for audiences to come and enjoy. That seemed like a great challenge.

I think for me, the reason I felt like I could even take that leap is because of my own personal grounding in it. That meant I really had skin in the game, in terms of wanting it to feel like it was, like I said, talking about that topic as opposed to talking at that topic, I guess.

IGN: Daniel, I think people might be surprised that, outside of the first shot of the movie, we don't see Benoit Blanc for about an hour into the movie. What was your reaction when you read the script?

Daniel Craig: Feels like two hours.

Rian Johnson: That's not about an hour. It's the first act.

Daniel Craig: Listen, I make up for it. You get enough of me in the next two-thirds of the movie, so it's all, it's not a problem. I approach these things like I always do. I don't want to read the script. I try and separate myself from the script when I read it because I want to read it with sort of outside eyes. Obviously, I read it looking at my part. Obviously I read it with Benoit in mind. But the film, the spine of the movie is the relationship between Father Jud and Benoit and we need to get to know him before Benoit can come in and start overacting.

IGN: I really did love that relationship between those two characters because one is a person driven by faith and then your character is obviously “just the facts”. Did you and Josh discuss the relationship much before you were filming?

Daniel Craig: I think the conversation was, I mean, in a way, Rian talks about (Benoit’s) background in a way, sort of put it there, that there was probably a very religious upbringing and that it was a response to that and then the move towards science and fact. And so as Rian said, it was really just important to make that an adult conversation and the joy of it being that there's a revelation for Blanc in the story.

I mean we're always trying to discuss it, figure it out, but there's no one conversation I can think of. It's one of many that you just sort of like, how about this? How about this? How about this? You're just trying to throw as many ideas into it as possible.

Rian Johnson: I think this was maybe my favorite part of this entire process. That first conversation between Blanc and Jud and the church, where they kind of really go head-to-head with their points-of-view. And this is an example of the type of collaboration that we have during it.

That was a scene that we actually dove into together, when it was still in the script phase, and Daniel had the incredibly perceptive instinct that I wrote it as a much softer scene between the two of them. And it was Daniel who was like, "I really think the harder you define these two, especially Blanc, the harder he comes in against faith, the more their kind of straight head-to-head in that first scene, the stronger their relationship will end up being."

And he was so right and so it was going back and forth and figuring out how far can we push it in terms of how far Blanc goes? That for me is part of the pleasure of making movies with this guy. It really is. I don't know. It is a joyful process of seeing how far we can push it and how we can make it the best it can be.

IGN: Daniel, Josh O'Connor is rumored to be up for the role of James Bond. What would you think of Josh as Bond?

Daniel Craig: I have to iron something out here. I started that rumor.

IGN: You started that rumor?

Rian Johnson: Maliciously. Maliciously.

Daniel Craig: Completely malicious. Let's hope he is.

IGN: Oh my God. Awesome. Thank you so much guys and I loved the movie.

Daniel Craig: Thank you.

Rian Johnson: Thanks a lot.

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery will be in select theaters November 26 and premieres on Netflix December 12.

In his Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery review, IGN’s Carlos Morales deemed the film “a solid third entry for Benoit Blanc, finally delivering the classic-style mystery the series has sorely needed.”

The first part of Stranger Things Season 5 is on its way in just a couple days — so naturally, it was the perfect time for Netflix to drop the trailer for the first three episodes, which will be released on the platform on November 26.

To be fair, we’ve seen most of the footage in the trailer, below, before — however, there’s all-new shots of Joe Keery’s Steve driving himself, Dustin, Nancy, and Jonathan into a portal, which seems to lead to the Upside Down itself, presumably to find and kill Vecna, the story’s central villain. Pretty interesting stuff there. We definitely want to know more about that.

STRANGER THINGS 5 VOL. 1

THIS WEDNESDAY

8PM ET / 5PM PT

DO YOU COPY pic.twitter.com/nG4Y0JwycL

— Netflix (@netflix) November 23, 2025

Netflix also recently released the first five minutes of the season, and got Ross and Matt Duffer, co-creators and showrunners of the series, to open up about where the characters are at as we head into the final season of the decade-long show.

“I think what's unique about this season is that it starts a little bit in chaos because our heroes ultimately lost at the end of Season 4,” Ross explained about the season’s pacing. “We usually set up their normal life and how they’re going about school, and then we introduce the supernatural element. But in this case, this season is sprinting from the start.”

Matt explained that it’s all going breakneck speed for a reason. He added: “They’re not experiencing normal life. Nothing in Hawkins is normal anymore... their movement is restricted, and there are Big Brother cameras everywhere. So not only are they active — their everyday, normal lives are anything but.”

The final season of Stranger Things has been broken up into three parts. The first section of three episodes drops the day before Thanksgiving, the second set of three episodes arrives for Christmas, and the finale episode of the series will premiere (both on the streamer and in theaters) on New Year’s Eve.

It’ll be interesting to see where the story of this series ends after all this time — but one thing’s for sure: they’re going to go out with a bang.

Lex Briscuso is a film and television critic and a freelance entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow her on Twitter at @nikonamerica.