
Hulk Hogan was filming Netflix docuseries at the time of his death
The wrestling legend died earlier this week, at the age of 71.
The previously unannounced project, made in partnership with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), is intended to chronicle the wrestling legend's storied life and career, on and off screen, and will still be released after Hogan's sudden passing, according to sources associated with the project. Filming remains ongoing.
One source close to the untitled documentary said that the project has been in the works since 2024. Over 20 hours of unseen sit-down interviews with Hogan have already been completed, and an additional 30 hours of scenes have already been shot.
The documentary was being produced with Hogan's full participation. 'People will see a side of him they haven't seen before,' the source told CNN.
No release date has been set thus far, and Hogan's unexpected death will require filmmakers to re-tool portions of the documentary. Cameras will be on the ground at WWE Smackdown on Friday evening to capture a planned tribute to Hogan, according to the source.
Born Terry Bollea and better known as Hulk Hogan, the professional wrestler was widely recognized as the biggest wrestling star of all time, helping catapult WWE into the massive success it is today.
He died on Thursday from cardiac arrest, according to officials. Police and fire personnel in Clearwater, Florida, said in a news conference that there were no signs of suspicious activity or foul play in his death and that a standard investigation is ongoing.
Hogan is credited with turning the sport of wrestling into an entertainment powerhouse. His larger-than-life presence in the 1980s and 1990s propelled him to become a household name and global superstar, creating the blueprint for other wrestlers – like Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson and John Cena – to parlay their fame in the ring over to Hollywood and into movies, television shows and reality TV.
The Netflix documentary project is being directed by Bryan Storkel and will be produced by Connor Schell's studio, Words + Pictures, in collaboration with WWE.
The Hogan doc was first reported by Puck.
Netflix declined to provide further details on the documentary at this time.
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Gizmodo
a few seconds ago
- Gizmodo
‘Donkey Kong Bananza' Should Be the Reason You Buy the Switch 2
I can feel my heart lift as I play Donkey Kong Bananza. Every punch from DK's ham-hock-sized fists sends a shower of stones and debris into the air. Enemies tear apart until they're left as golden skeletons, begging me to shoulder them into the nearest rock face just to watch the scenery dissolve into a rainbow of rock, mud, and golden nuggets. Every chunk ripped from the ground offers more gameplay possibilities, but I'm barely thinking. I'm just going. I know that I'm playing the game the right way because I keep letting loose, and I keep finding secrets and hidey-holes for the game's multitude of collectibles. This is catharsis. This is joy. If all future Nintendo Switch 2 games receive this much time and attention—with such a focus on playing to the dockable handheld's strengths—then we could be looking at one of the best consoles of all time. Donkey Kong Bananza Donkey Kong Bananza one of those games that you end up buying an entire console for, and not regretting it one bit. Pros Cons Donkey Kong Bananza makes you feel as powerful and reckless as a massive, silly ape with bananas on the brain. This world is meant to be breakable. The denizens of the game's 17 main underground layers are happy for you to smash through their homes, break their furniture, or even break them (don't worry, those lovable, bright-eyed 'Fractones' grow back). It would be a mindless escape if it weren't for young Pauline riding on your back. She offers encouragement and direction. In the game's rare quiet moments, Pauline shares her fears with her mum ape companion. She's afraid of many things, like most kids are—spiders, poison, and heights. But she finds comfort in the fact that DK's there. It's like you're leading a child hand-in-hand through a beautiful adventure. She feels safe with you, and as the player, I wanted to make sure I deserved that trust. To say Donkey Kong Bananza hooked me is an understatement. Still, I know its flaws well. The camera sometimes cannot keep up with players going underground or into DK-shaped holes in walls. There are rare points in the game where the number of objects flying across the screen is too much for the Switch 2 to handle, which leads to frame drops. DK climbs with such speed he can be difficult to control, especially when you try to swap from one plane onto another. Many deaths felt earned; I was going full ape and spilled myself off a cliff. Other deaths left me sighing in exasperation as I watched my gold counter go down. I was never left bereft of gold, but as an obsessive completionist, I hurt to leave a single nugget uncollected. If there's one big complaint I have, it's that Nintendo didn't take advantage of all the new control options available. The only instance of the Joy-Con 2 mouse controls is in two-player mode. A second controller controls Pauline, who can aim around the screen and shoot out words like a back-mounted monkey turret. It's not a difficult game. Out of all the bosses in all the kilometers deep underground, whether they're giant monsters or one of the three main nemeses—three kongs of The Void Company headed up by the maniacal Void Kong—I died only a few times, and normally because I had already turned my brain off while reveling in the latest crater I put into the ground. Exploring requires only an ounce more brainpower as you hunt for various Banandium gems to improve Donkey Kong's capabilities or fossils to fuel your ever-present need to dress DK and Pauline in swankier garb. A week after launch is time enough to think about the place Donkey Kong has in Nintendo's lexicon. Games like Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey on the original Switch set the tone for what players could expect. Both were incredible games that felt all the better because they could make use of what made the console unique. The OG Switch was a low-power device, and despite that, we would not find another mass-market game that offered the same sense of exploration as BoTW until Elden Ring. Sony took more than seven years to find a studio that could make a game as imaginative as Odyssey in the form of the delightful Astro Bot. Now Nintendo has a whole new console that's much more powerful than before. No, it's not as strong as an Xbox Series X or PlayStation 5. It doesn't need to be, when the developers inside Nintendo's various teams are this good at crafting games built with the hardware in mind. In a Q&A posted by Nintendo, Bananza's developers (many of whom worked on Odyssey) said the game originated as an original Switch title—similar to how Mario Kart World began its development. The team settled on using voxel technology to build out the game world's destructible terrain. Imagine if a pixel could exist on a three-dimensional grid, and you'll get close to what this looks like in programming terms. It's the same technology used in games like Deep Rock Galactic to help your space dwarves dig through mountains of rock. In Bananza, even the enemies are made of voxels. While some levels in Odyssey used voxel technology, it was in limited quantities and on certain levels. The Switch 2 has more RAM available—12GB compared to 4GB on the OG handheld. Of the Switch 2 RAM, 3GB of the total is dedicated to running the system's base software. With only 9GB of RAM available and improved CPU capabilities, Nintendo's devs crafted a wholly destructible world where there can be a cavalcade of distinct physics objects moving on screen and still maintain a stable 60 fps frame rate, at least most of the time. Nintendo's strongest asset has been crafting games to fit the hardware. Bananza is what happens when you give the dev teams more resources to push what's possible. You can't put Donkey Kong in a basket (he'd probably just punch his way out and leave a 5-foot hole in your wall in the process). It's a collect-a-thon that shares so much of the same DNA as Super Mario Odyssey. It's a cathartic action game. It's a game about discovery, exploration, and player expression. But at its heart, it's a physics-based puzzle-action title. You didn't get many of those on the original Switch, especially toward the end of its lifespan. That makes sense, as the system simply didn't have the memory nor CPU power necessary to handle a multitude of physics simulations for dozens of objects at once. The game is chock-full of optional battle arenas and puzzle environments. Most of them rely on a specific mechanic introduced for each level, but they sometimes feel like Nintendo is flexing its muscles for where it can push the Switch 2. One memorable level in the Freezer Layer asks players to smack a path through snow to let dozens of small ice crystals fill a bucket—like a large pachinko snow cone machine. That's not to say the Switch 2 is somehow a secret console powerhouse. We know what's going on inside, but it makes what Donkey Kong Bananza is able to achieve that much more impressive. The world of Bananza's underground environs is painterly, almost pastel in both the look and colors of each underground map. The hairy ape that's always at the center of the screen is more detailed than the rest of the environment. All media is an illusion to some degree, but Nintendo hides the fault lines better than most companies, especially when it has more room to push game detail. What will be interesting to see with the rest of Nintendo's first-year Switch 2 titles will be if it can keep up this pedigree. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa told investors earlier this month that longer development cycles are 'unavoidable,' especially if players keep expecting more from their games. Video game industry analyst Joost van Dreunen reported that Nintendo's full-time employee count has ballooned to 8,205 in 2025, at least based on company financials. Nintendo will need to keep up the pace to meet player expectations. If future titles are as good and innovative as Donkey Kong Bananza, we won't have much to worry about.


CBS News
a minute ago
- CBS News
Her first year teaching, she met a star student. Fifteen years later, music is still connecting them.
This article is sponsored by LG. "Music is the language we all share and can have no issue with," 23-year-old Gianee "Gia" Martinez says. She is a graduate of the Institute of American Musical Theater in New York City and is currently pursuing a career in musical theater. Martinez started learning music 15 years ago. It was 2009 and she was in third grade at PS 48 in the Bronx. Budget cuts meant she didn't have the opportunity to have music class her first two years at the school. But to her surprise, a new music teacher was hired ahead of her third year. "I was so excited because I've always loved music. My parents are musical people, so I was so excited to [be] either learning an instrument, or just singing, or learning how to read music even," Martinez told CBS News. While it was her parents who sparked a passion for music, it was Melissa Salguero who taught her music. Salguero told CBS News she immediately noticed Martinez, who she said was constantly singing at school. "I saw the talent that she had, she just needed a stage. She just needed an opportunity," she said. "I firmly believe talent is everywhere but opportunity is not." It wasn't always easy to give the students that opportunity. When Salguero got to PS 48, there was no music program. She had to create it from the ground up — finding funding, instruments and building the curriculum. If it wasn't for her, Martinez might not have been able to learn her passion. She went from playing recorder in class to joining the school band and playing clarinet. Salguero says she made her the section leader because of how she would bring people together to practice their instruments. When asked if perhaps Martinez became a good leader in band because Salguero was a good leader to her, the teacher teared up. "I actually never thought about that," she said, taking a moment to collect herself. "When I'm teaching, I'm not thinking about that. I'm just thinking about sharing my love of music with them. It's not oftentimes I'm thinking about not only the impact on my students' lives, but how they move and operate in the world. And the countless lives that she's changed just doing what she loves." That little leader, the self-procclaimed "teacher's pet," the one who Salguero still thinks of 15 years after meeting, is now 23 years old. But the music that connected them all those years ago has kept them in each other's lives. Martinez has starred as Maria in the Open Hydrant Theatre Company's production of "West Side Story," and as Vanessa in the company's performance of "In the Heights." And now, she's auditioning for Broadway shows. Salguero, who has watched Martinez perform years after she left PS 48, has always been a fan of her former student. But this teacher is a star too. In 2018, she was honored with the Grammy Music Educator Award. "When I was nominated, I was like, 'What? Is this a joke?'" Salguero said. She was nominated four times before she won, filling out her Grammy application each year. "And year after year, I just grew [by] thinking and filling out the application. It was an incredible development because I was reflecting on what I was doing and how I could be better," she said. "I didn't really think about 'I'm doing this to win a Grammy,' I was just trying to be a better teacher." Martinez excitedly watched Salguero receive her Grammy — just like her former teacher had excitedly watched her perform over the years. To thank her for her unwavering support over 15 years, Martinez had a surprise for Salguero. She created a personal song for her using LG's "Radio Optimism" tool, designed to help strengthen meaningful human connections and spread optimism through music. All you do is pick your mood and genre and type in who and what you want your song to be about. "The message that I put for the prompt, I put something along the words of 'I wouldn't have asked for anyone else to teach me music at such a young age,'" Martinez said. "She's amazing and without her, I honestly don't know what my musical career would look like right now." Radio Optimism is not only a song generator, but a radio station that plays all the custom songs that get created. So if someone decides to publish their song, they have a chance to hear it played on the station. Martinez presented the song to Salguero, who had no idea when we reunited them that a song in her honor would be made. At first she was speechless, then as the jazz number played, her face lit up. "Oh Miss Salguero, you're a shining star, guiding me through melodies near and far," the generated song lyrics went. "With your notes I learn to fly, with every song I reach the sky," the song continues. "At a young age you lit the flame, now music and I are one in the same. Your passion sparked a fire. In my heart you took me higher." By the end of the tune, the two were shimmying and shaking jazz hands. "I figured you would appreciate the jazz," Martinez said. "Oh yeah, the jazz hands," Salguero said. "Oh my God, that was so good." No matter how many years it's been, there's never been a gap in their relationship. Because music is the bridge. "Music is the language we all share and can have no issue with," Martinez said. "That's so beautiful," Salguero replied. When people come together to sing or play music, it creates a special bond. "Everybody has so many things running around in your mind… and then for one moment, you're all there together, you're all singing together, you're all present," Salguero said. "That is something that is so special to music in terms of connecting people, that I've never felt that connection any other place."


CBS News
a minute ago
- CBS News
Linden Grove Nightclub and Restaurant closing its doors for good
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