Skydance joins the delay train, pushing Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra to 2026
Skydance first announced Marvel 1943 at the Game Developers Conference in 2024. It's described the game as a narrative-driven action-adventure game set in the titular year, and it follows the adventures of Captain America and the WW2-era Black Panther, Azzuri. Skydance is creating the game in cooperating with Plaion, and the graphics shown at GDC appear to be incredibly realistic.
The studio has thus far not revealed too much about the story, except that the two will be joined by two other heroes — Howling Commando Gabe Jones and Wakandan spy Nanali — and presumably oppose the villainous organization Hydra. The fact the game is penned by games industry veteran Amy Hennig, known for the Uncharted series, among others.
This is not the first major title to be delayed from a planned 2025 launch date. Earlier this month, Rockstar Games revealed that it had set a May 2026 launch date for Grand Theft Auto VI; the game was originally scheduled for a fall 2025 window. One of the side effects of such a large game announcing a release window is that other publishers seemed to be reluctant to announce their own, lest they inadvertently land on the same day or even week. Marvel 1943's delay is likely not related, but an 'early' 2026 launch window might mean Skydance intends to release it before Rockstar's juggernaut.
READ SOURCE businessmayor May 14, 2025
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Engadget
3 hours ago
- Engadget
Paramount pays Trump $16 million to settle Harris lawsuit
Paramount has agreed to pay $16 million to settle its lawsuit with Donald Trump filed during the 2020 presidential campaign, according to The Washington Post . The deal is controversial as legal experts said Paramount had a strong chance of prevailing in court and may have settled to smooth the path for its $2.4 billion Skydance merger. Paramount said the $16 million would be allocated to Trump's future presidential library and not paid to him "directly or indirectly." In addition, it "does not include a statement of apology or regret," according to the media company. Trump filed the lawsuit over a CBS interview with Kamala Harris that aired in October, initially demanding $10 billion and an apology. The network said it edited one of her answers for time (about Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanhau), but Trump's attorney alleged that CBS intended to "confuse, deceive and mislead the public" by leaving out her full comments. Several legal experts called the lawsuit "frivolous and dangerous," as CBS didn't report any factual inaccuracies and the First Amendment gives media companies wide leeway in presenting information. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reviewing the Skydance merger has said that its approval wasn't linked to Trump's lawsuit. However, some Paramount executives saw the complaint as an obstacle to completing the deal, according to The New York Times , and the settlement was championed by Paramount's board chair, Shari Redstone. Inside CBS's newsroom, it was seen by some employees as a low point for a network with a storied history in news and investigative reporting. Paramount has struggled financially after investing billions into its streaming service, Paramount+, which has yet to turn a profit. Under Skydance owner and new CEO David Ellison, the company plans to rebuild its streaming technology while reducing costs and improving efficiency. That won't happen until the merger is final, though, and the delay is reportedly also holding back the development of key franchises like Star Trek . If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.
San Francisco Chronicle
8 hours ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Review: ‘The Old Guard 2' is a lifeless sequel that should have stayed buried
In the miserable pandemic days of July 2020, the release of ' The Old Guard ' brought some modest relief. Here was an intelligent superhero movie about a group of mercenaries with one specific but limited power: They were immortal. Aside from that, they were normal people, subject to pain, temporary injury, emotional disturbance and capture. The limitations of their power made for a better and less scattered story than we'd come to expect, and 'The Old Guard' emerged as the best superhero movie since ' Black Panther ' (2018). It also seemed to point in a positive direction for the genre altogether, with its concentration on human-scale superheroes. While the original was serious, 'Old Guard 2' is merely forlorn. Its story holds little interest and, to make matters worse, it doesn't even end. Instead, it stops mid-story, promising a sequel that feels less like a promise than a threat. There's one haunting element, however, that makes good use of the movie's premise. Veronica Ngo plays Quynh, an immortal who, in the 16th century is accused of witchcraft and is sealed in an iron coffin before being thrown into the sea. But she doesn't just drown — she spends 500 years drowning, dying and waking up alive and drowning again, in an endless cycle of torture. Understandably, when she is finally pulled up from the depths centuries later, she is slightly miffed at Andromache (Charlize Theron), a fellow immortal who promised to rescue her and never did. Accordingly, Quynh teams up with Andromache's sworn enemy, Discord (Uma Thurman), whose entire mission in life is to destroy Andromache and her comradely band of fellow immortals. The movie operates with the idea that these immortals, working behind the scenes, are essential to the survival of humanity. But we can't really believe it this time out. 'The Old Guard 2' begins with Andromache and her compatriots killing dozens of security guards in a massive mansion. We have no idea why they're doing this. We have no reason to hate the people they're slaughtering and, five years since the last movie, we have no particular reason to like Andromache's team. It's just action for the sake of action. Thus, when Discord shows up and starts causing trouble for the Old Guard, the fatal two-word thought enters the mind: Who cares? Likewise, when Discord puts her cards on the table and reveals that she wants to 'end immortal interference' in the affairs of mortals, we can't help but think, 'OK. Fine. Is that really such a terrible idea?' It's like when you go into a voting booth and read a proposition that you have no strong feelings about. 'Hmm, 'ending immortal interference.' That could be OK. Is that really a bad thing? Should I be against that?' Clearly, 'The Old Guard 2,' like some propositions, is something you can skip, knowing you don't have a dog in that fight. Or, to put it another way, this is a movie with two big problems: We're not worried about the fate of the Old Guard in terms of what it might mean for humans, in general, and we're not particularly worried about the members of the Old Guard themselves, because they seem so unhappy being alive forever that we can't help thinking they might be better off dead.
Gizmodo
15 hours ago
- Gizmodo
‘The Old Guard 2' Is a Tender Sophomore Stretched Thin by Sequel Syndrome
After years of production delays, Netflix and Skydance are finally poised to release The Old Guard 2, the Charlize Theron-led sequel to the 2020 adaptation of Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández's Image Comics series. Directed by Victoria Mahoney, the sequel reunites its immortal mercenary found family for another globe-trotting mission. Unfortunately, this time around, their greatest threat isn't its new immortal big bad and its long-awaited grudge match. It's the sequel's narrative inertia that's crushed under the weight of putting the cart before the horse to build a franchise. Set several years after the events of the first film, The Old Guard 2 finds Andy (Theron) reckoning with her newfound mortality. Alongside Nile (KiKi Layne), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), Nicky (Luca Marinelli), and James Copley (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Andy's team now faces a formidable new threat in Discord, a shadowy figure played by Uma Thurman, who claims to be the world's first immortal. Wielding knowledge that could unravel the very fabric of their eternal existence, Discord aims to dismantle everything Andy and her comrades have fought for over centuries to safeguard humanity. In a bid to stop her, the team turns to an old comrade, Tuah (Henry Golding), hoping his insight into the mythos of their immortality will hold a key to ending Discord's plan. Understandably, the film presents itself as a blockbuster showdown between Theron and Thurman—a battle between two of Hollywood's legendary action heroines that reads like a pop-culture fan fiction come to life. However, their showdown, while serviceable, ultimately feels like the undercard, both in terms of spectacle and emotional weight. The real main event is the long-awaited reunion between Andy and Quynh (Veronica Ngô), her once-intimate comrade who spent centuries entombed in an iron maiden at the bottom of the sea and finds herself aligned with Discord. While Andy's confrontation with Discord brings sparks, it's her reconciling with Quynh's festering fury and unresolved emotional damage that ignites the film's most compelling tension—in the form of a vendetta five centuries in the making. The Old Guard 2's action sequences—ostensibly the franchise's calling card—are strangely limp this time around. Despite some inventive staging in its early goings, the film's momentum quickly fades, giving way to jittery editing and disjointed camera work that rob pivotal immortal-versus-immortal fights of their impact. The much-touted showdown between Theron and Thurman, along with the emotionally charged clash between Nile and Quynh, bears the brunt of this breakdown. Instead of crescendoing into operatic spectacle, these battles fumble with continuity lapses and what feels like competing takes that were either left in the editing bay or arbitrarily stitched together. The film's entire final act, rather than delivering catharsis, plays like a placeholder for whatever might come next—an unfinished bridge to a sequel that's still a pitch rather than a promise. And therein lies The Old Guard 2's biggest flaw: it's too preoccupied with laying track for a hypothetical third chapter to finish the one it's actually telling. Instead of delivering a fully realized, emotionally satisfying sequel, the film plays like a feature-length prologue that constantly signals its meditative importance without doing the necessary groundwork to earn it. Subplots, such as the friction between Nicky and Joe or the reintroduction of excommunicated team member Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), function less as meaningful drama and more as artificial bloat, highlighting the film's uneven narrative urgency. Even the film's most promising emotional arc with Andy and Quynh's fraught reunion, which simmers with centuries of silence, betrayal, and unresolved longing as a proverbial layup for the sequel to slam dunk, hits like a technical free throw, hobbled by the inflated lore drops and aggressive sequel baiting that foul up the film's pacing. What could've been a tight, character-driven sequel instead dissolves into a middling bridge to a trilogy that laughably hasn't earned its next step despite how visibly proud the film is of its cliffhanger. What lingers after The Old Guard 2 are fragments of stronger ideas—moments of grisly body horror from its immortal brawls, inventive flashes of choreography, and themes of mortality, guilt, and redemption that shimmer faintly before drifting out of focus. The film seems too anxious to complete a thought before pivoting to unravel and undo the previous film's climax, all in service of constructing a grander narrative that never actually materializes in its presentation. Long before the credits roll, it's painfully clear the film has no intention of delivering any semblance of resolution found in its final act, but a rough sketch of what the film aspired to be is tucked away in what's either studio exec meddling or, worse yet, a script that failed to rise to the occasion. In its eagerness to pave the way for what comes next, The Old Guard 2 forgets to finish the act it's in, leaving fans parsing microexpressions, filling story gaps with headcanon, and wondering whether the real climax got lost in edits or outsourced to fix-it fanfiction. The Old Guard 2 streams on Netflix on July 2. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
