‘The Witcher: Blood Origin’ debuts December 25th on Netflix

The Witcher: Blood Origin, a prequel to Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy novel series, will debut on December 25th, the streamer announced today during its Tudum event. Netflix also revealed that English actress Minnie Driver (Good Will Hunting, Starstruck) is part of the cast. Driver will narrate the events of the series and may even appear in The Witcher, which will return next summer. Driver said her character plays a pivotal part “in connecting Blood Origin’s past with The Witcher’s future.”       

Set thousands of years before the story of Geralt and Ciri, Blood Origin will center on the Conjunction of the Spheres, the moment in the Witcher universe where humans, elves and monsters all come to inhabit the fantasy world of the series. Actress Michelle Yeoh stars as Scian, the elven protagonist of the tale. Originally slated to run six episodes, Blood Origin will instead be four episodes long. 

Watch Netflix’s Tudum fan event here at 1PM ET

Netflix will host the second installment of its Tudum global fan event today. The stream will feature news, trailers and clips from more than 120 shows, movies, specials, documentaries and games. You’ll be able to watch the event, which starts at 1PM ET, below. Netflix will also stream the event on its Twitter, Twitch and Facebook channels, as well as its YouTube channels around the world.

Among many, many other projects, Tudum will feature an update on season three of The Witcher, details on prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin, an appearance from the Squid Game cast and a Stranger Things blooper reel. In addition, Tudum will include news on The Crown, trailers for new seasons of Outer Banks and Manifest, a first peek at Jennifer Lopez’s movie The Mother and an exclusive clip from Rian Johnson’s follow-up to Knives Out, Glass Onion. There will also be a look at the Netflix version of Oxenfree — the company bought developer Night School Studio last year. 

This could be an important event for Netflix, which has had a fairly rough year. Its subscriber numbers dropped for the first time — it lost around 1.2 million subscribers in the first six months of 2022. Netflix has raised prices in several territories in recent months and it has a cheaper, ad-supported tier on the way. To both keep current subscribers on board and bring in newcomers, Netflix has to get folks excited about what it has to offer. Events like Tudum can help with that.

TikTok rolls out comment ‘dislike’ button to all users

You now have a way to show your disapproval of hurtful (or simply pointless) TikTok comments. In the wake of a test this spring, TikTok has started the global rollout for a comment ‘dislike’ button. As with other social networks, you can tap a thumbs-down button to express your displeasure, or undo the action if you’ve had second thoughts.

The company bills the feature as another way to get feedback regarding “irrelevant or inappropriate” comments. Ideally, a comment with a large volume of dislikes will warn TikTok about hate speech, spam or trolling that it might otherwise miss. That, in turn, could promote healthier comment sections.

Before you ask: yes, TikTok is aware of the potential for abuse. Like YouTube, TikTok won’t show dislike counts. A mob might have less incentive to downvote comments it disagrees with. TikTok hasn’t said if it will crack down against misuses of the button, but we’ve asked the company for clarification.

This isn’t the only moderation tool at TikTok’s disposal, and the combined resources could help the company get a handle on comment sections that all too frequently go downhill. With that in mind, it’s not clear how effective the dislike button might be given TikTok’s challenges with enforcing its policies. TikTok still has problems controlling misinformation, for instance. Dislikes might help, but they don’t represent a surefire fix.

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EA Motive is working on a single-player Iron Man game

EA’s Motive Studio is putting the finishing touches on its solid-looking Dead Space remake, but it’s already looking ahead to other projects. EA announced that Motive has teamed up with Marvel to make an Iron Man game.

Although the title is in early development, the company has teased out a few details. It will be a single-player, third-person, action-adventure game with an original story. The idea is that you’ll be able to “feel what it’s like to truly play as Iron Man,” EA claimed in a statement.

The Motive team working on the project will be led by Olivier Proulx, who was a senior producer on last year’s surprisingly great Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Proulx also worked on the single-player side of Marvel’s Avengers and so won’t be a stranger to Iron Man. “We have a great opportunity to create a new and unique story that we can call our own. Marvel is encouraging us to create something fresh,” Proulx said.

EA said the Iron Man game marks the beginning of its partnership with Marvel as it’s the first of several titles they’ll make together. Rumors suggest one of those is a Black Panther game.

‘Portal’ will get ray tracing to show off NVIDIA’s 4000-series GPUs

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