Month: September 2026

Netflix and Sega announce Crazy Taxi, Sonic and Stranger Than Heaven adaptations

Netflix and Sega have announced a new adaptation deal covering multiple films and series based on several Sega properties. The companies specifically named Crazy Taxi, Sonic, and Stranger Than Heaven as part of the lineup.

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First up is Crazy Taxi, which Netflix is developing as a live-action comedy. Sega and Netflix say they want to keep the games’ fast, funny arcade chaos intact. Dan Gregor and Doug Mand, who wrote the 2025 Naked Gun reboot, are attached, along with producers Neal H. Moritz, Toby Ascher, and Toru Nakahara from the Sonic the Hedgehog films.

The deal also includes a new animated Sonic series aimed at older preschoolers. Carlos Stevens and Toru Nakahara are involved, and the show is being positioned for a younger audience than Sonic Prime. There’s also a live-action Stranger Than Heaven film from Sega and RGG Studio, which the companies describe as an action or crime drama set in Japan’s criminal underworld.

If you’ve been keeping an eye on Netflix’s push into game adaptations, this batch stands out. The streamer is already developing projects tied to Assassin’s Creed, Gears of War, and Minecraft, and Sega says Crazy Taxi: World Tour is lined up for 2027, which gives the franchise some added cross-media momentum.

You’ll be able to watch these projects on Netflix, though there are still no release dates, according to Netflix and Sega.

Nvidia and Palantir reportedly curb public AI use: data-leak fears grow

A new enterprise AI report says some of the biggest corporate buyers, including Nvidia, Palantir, and Booz Allen Hamilton, are scaling back or flat-out stopping their use of public OpenAI and Anthropic models because they don’t trust where the data might end up.

According to the report, the worry doesn’t stop at training data. These companies are also looking hard at prompts, responses, logs, usage patterns, and metadata, since any of that can reveal connected apps or expose how internal processes actually work.

OpenAI and Anthropic both say their enterprise contracts don’t train on customer data by default. But C Spire and others argue that technical data can still be collected, without clear guardrails around what gets captured, how long it’s stored, or who can access it. The report says Anthropic’s June policy change made those concerns sharper by allowing some retention for abuse monitoring and, in research cases, for up to 30 days.

For companies that handle regulated data or valuable IP, the direction is hard to miss. The report says zero-data-retention terms, air-gapped environments, private cloud, and on-premises deployments are gaining traction. It also says nearly three-quarters of S&P 500 companies now treat generative AI as a material risk, while a 2024 study found that 27% had temporarily banned it.

Companies can still use public models through those providers. Even so, the report argues that isolated deployments may be worth the higher upfront cost, because at enough scale they can beat per-token pricing.

Paramount ends Netflix animation deal: two movies are still coming

Paramount and Netflix have ended their animation deal. Brad Bird’s Ray Gunn and Rich Moore’s still-untitled Jack and the Beanstalk movie are staying at Netflix. By all accounts, the split was mutual. The 2023 pact made a lot more sense when it was built around Skydance Animation as its own partner. Once Skydance came under Paramount, the arrangement no longer lined up with Paramount’s broader distribution plans.

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Netflix also isn’t as dependent on outside animation as it used to be. Dan Lin and Hannah Minghella have expanded the company’s in-house slate with The Sea Beast, Leo, Pinocchio, and KPop Demon Hunters. Paramount, meanwhile, has more reason to keep Skydance Animation movies inside its own system, whether that means a theatrical release or distribution through its own channels. That includes Cosmic Motors from John Lasseter and Louie Del Carmen. Around the industry, the talk points in a few directions at once: Skydance Animation appears to have had favorable original terms, Netflix has grown more self-sufficient, and Paramount wants to hold on to family titles rather than send them out.

If you follow Netflix animation, this still jumps out because Swapped went on to become one of Netflix’s most-watched films ever, with 144.9 million views.

You’ll still get Ray Gunn and Jack and the Beanstalk on Netflix. Paramount will also keep licensing Matlock, The King of Queens, Seal Team, Watson, and NCIS to Netflix.

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Zack Snyder’s The Last Photograph premieres at TIFF: early reviews are poor

Zack Snyder’s The Last Photograph premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, a project he’d been developing since the mid-2000s, and the first reviews and reactions out of TIFF were brutal.

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If you were waiting to hear how it played there, the early critical response tagged it as bloated, dull, self-indulgent, grim, and violent, and the overall reaction was muted.

Those reviews point to the same problems over and over: the screenplay, the pacing, the oppressive tone, the long runtime, the lack of momentum. Even Snyder’s visual style, critics say, can’t pull it out, and the absence of studio oversight seems to have made things worse, not better.

And yes, this is the real The Last Photograph, not a rumor and not some mix-up, the same Zack Snyder project that was shelved in 2016 before he eventually self-produced it through his company, The Stone Quarry; it follows ex-DEA operative Ethan Black (Stuart Martin) in South America as he searches for his missing niece and nephew alongside war photographer Fra Fee after his diplomat brother and sister-in-law are murdered, before the story takes a surreal turn.

If Snyder’s maximalist style is usually your thing, this more intimate detour doesn’t sound like one to go out of your way for yet, and some critics are already calling it one of his weakest films, which only adds to the rough stretch after Rebel Moon, even with the stronger backing he got for Dawn of the Dead and Zack Snyder’s Justice League.

You can’t watch it after TIFF yet, though, because The Last Photograph still doesn’t have a distributor or any release plan.

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Warlock is now official: no Baldur’s Gate 3-style choices

Wizards of the Coast subsidiary Invoke Studios has now revealed Warlock, a new Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game. The big distinction is right there in the setup: this is a more linear experience, built around a fixed main campaign rather than the branching RPG structure you get in Baldur’s Gate 3 or Dragon Age.

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That makes it stand out in 2026. Dominic Guay describes Warlock as a third-person, single-player action-adventure game. You follow Kaatri, a pre-written warrior who gains magic through a pact, and the story isn’t built around radically different paths or a good-versus-evil morality system.

There’s still an open world to explore in Darkon, a Ravenloft realm in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, and you can step away from the main story to roam around, fight, find encounters, and pick up side quests. Invoke Studios says those side activities can turn into “your own little adventures,” even if the main plot , relationships, identity, and endings aren’t there for you to rebuild from scratch.

If you’re looking for a Dungeons & Dragons game with authored storytelling, melee-and-spell combat, and a tighter, more cinematic structure instead of a giant choice machine, Warlock looks like one to watch. It’s in development for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, with launch currently set for 2027.

Reacher season 4 finale gets a release date: Neagley launches the same day

Prime Video has locked in Reacher Season 4 Episode 8, “Cut,” as the season finale, and it’s set to arrive on September 16, 2026. The episode is expected to hit Prime Video at 12:00 a.m. PT / 3:00 a.m. ET.

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If you’ve kept up with Reacher Season 4 since Prime Video dropped the first three episodes on August 12 and then moved to a weekly rollout, this last chapter should finally pull a few threads together: the Gone Tomorrow subway death, the missing USB drive, the people operating in the shadows, and that possible bioweapon angle.

Season 4 has pushed further into political intrigue and espionage than earlier Reacher runs. It’s also shown Jack Reacher as a sloppier, more mistake-prone anti-hero than usual, especially in Episode 7.

Prime Video is also premiering Neagley that same day. In it, Frances Neagley looks into a friend’s suspicious death and stumbles onto another conspiracy. And unlike Reacher, Neagley is dropping all eight episodes at once, with a more psychological, character-driven bent.

If you watch Amazon’s Reacher franchise on a regular basis, there’s a lot landing here at once, especially since Prime Video has already renewed Reacher for Season 5 and Cinemark XD is giving the series an extra theatrical boost with a September 15 screening.

You’ll be able to watch the Reacher finale and stream all of Neagley on September 16.

World of Warcraft: Forever is official: release date, beta and controller support

Blizzard has set a date for World of Warcraft: Forever: November 4, 2026. The game adds new zones, quests, dungeons, and raids, along with the new Skyborne race and official controller support for Blizzard’s long-term take on classic World of Warcraft. Before that, a beta starts on September 17, 2026.

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World of Warcraft: Forever grows out of the World of Warcraft Classic team’s Season of Mastery, Hardcore, and Season of Discovery experiments. It keeps the level cap at 60, pushes further into Vanilla-style design, and adds new content that Blizzard says should feel like it could’ve existed in 2004-era WoW. It also follows its own story route, separate from modern World of Warcraft.

If classic WoW still works on you, the slower pace, the reliance on other people, the way the world feels stitched together by its players, and you’ve been hoping for something bigger than Classic Plus, this is probably worth a look. Blizzard is pitching World of Warcraft: Forever as a lower-FOMO “forever home,” built around rulesets like Normal, PvP, and Hardcore rather than the usual realm identity. It also adds a Legacy System for alts, more than 600 new profession recipes, extra race and class combinations like Gnome Priests and Undead Paladins, and a controller-friendly interface with a radial menu and reworked action bars. There’s still no console announcement. You can sign up through Blizzard for the September 17, 2026 beta before the full launch on November 4, 2026.

Costco could stock Pokémon Ascended Heroes ETB next week: rumored price is $43

Costco could start putting Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution—Ascended Heroes Elite Trainer Boxes on shelves during the week of September 14, 2026. That’s based on what collectors are seeing in community groups, stock trackers, and alleged employee leaks, which also peg the price at somewhere between $42 and $42.99.

There’s still nothing official from Costco, so take this for what it is: an unannounced restock rumor. Even so, people in the community say shipments are already on the way, a possible SKU, 2022324, is making the rounds, and some U.S. Costco stores may set boxes out earlier or later than others, if they get them at all.

If you collect Pokémon cards, this one’s hard to ignore. Pokémon TCG: Mega Evolution—Ascended Heroes came out on February 20, 2026, and it’s still one of the hottest Mega Evolution releases of the year, helped along by all the interest around Pokémon Legends: Z-A. If Costco really does price it in the low-$40 range, that would land well under retail and way below the roughly $160 resale price on the secondary market, especially with hype building before the September 16 Pokémon TCG: 30th Celebration release.

You’ll need a Costco membership. The same community reports also say there could be a two-box limit per membership, and participating stores are rumored to receive around 360 boxes each. If you’re planning to check, go early at your local Costco warehouse, because reported distribution looks fairly tight, about 111 locations total, including 35 on the West Coast and 33 in the Southwest.

Blizzard says Battle.net isn’t trying to rival Steam: CD Projekt games are a selective partnership

BlizzCon 2026 brought an unexpected Battle.net update: Blizzard announced Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Remastered for its PC launcher, adding two of CD Projekt Red’s biggest RPGs to the service. The company was also quick to narrow the scope of the deal. This isn’t the start of some broader storefront expansion meant to rival Steam or the Epic Games Store. As executive Andrew Guerrero put it, Blizzard is “obviously not out there trying to do the Steam or Epic Game Store thing.”

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What Blizzard seems to want here is a smaller, handpicked lineup of big-name games that fit the audience already logging time in Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Overwatch, not a giant third-party catalog for its own sake. Battle.net has made room for outside games before, including Destiny 2, Call of Duty, and other releases tied to Activision Blizzard and Microsoft. The difference is in how Blizzard is talking about these additions now: not as the beginning of an open-door policy, but as deliberate exceptions.

There’s more tied to the partnership than simply putting the games on the launcher. Buy The Witcher 3 expansion Songs of the Past on Battle.net and you’ll get a Geralt-themed Diablo IV Barbarian skin. Overwatch is also set to receive Cyberpunk: Edgerunners content in 2027. If Battle.net is already where you spend most of your PC gaming time, both additions make a pretty solid case for themselves. You’ll be able to pick up both games on PC through Battle.net.

Netflix announces a new Sonic the Hedgehog series: SEGA deal expands

Netflix and SEGA have a new animated Sonic the Hedgehog series in the works, part of a wider adaptation push between the two companies. This one isn’t Sonic Prime. They’re making it for an older preschool audience, with a fast, joke-heavy tone and some emotional weight underneath it. So far, though, Netflix and SEGA haven’t put out an official title, any plot details, character art, or much in the way of public reaction.

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They repeated a few of those basics in their announcement: this new Sonic the Hedgehog show is separate from Sonic Prime, and it’s being built for that older preschool crowd as a high-energy comedy with a more grounded emotional side. Beyond that, there’s still not much to look at yet, since there’s no title , no story outline, no character visuals, and no big public response to track.

Netflix’s pitch for this strategy is pretty straightforward. Established characters come with worlds people already recognize, plus fan communities that are already there and paying attention. Sonic has already proved useful on that front. Netflix says Sonic Prime reached 82.1 million hours viewed in the first half of 2023, drew a large international audience, and made its way back into Netflix’s Top 10 English TV rankings in January 2024.

And Sonic isn’t the only SEGA property getting this treatment. A live-action Crazy Taxi film is also on the slate, along with a live-action Stranger Than Heaven adaptation from the developers behind Yakuza.

If you already keep up with Sonic or with Netflix’s game adaptations more broadly, this one’s worth keeping an eye on, especially while Netflix fills out a bigger lineup across film, animation, and worldwide streaming.

The new Sonic the Hedgehog series will stream on Netflix. It’s arriving at a moment when the franchise is already in a strong run at the box office: the Sonic the Hedgehog films have now passed $1 billion worldwide, with Sonic the Hedgehog 3 having opened in December 2024 and Sonic the Hedgehog 4 set for March 19, 2027.