Month: September 2026

Warner Bros. Discovery has posted its results for the second quarter of 2026, and the numbers put the spotlight back on AT&T’s 2018 Time Warner acquisition and the messy breakup that came after it.

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AT&T paid $108.7 billion for Time Warner in 2018, after the U.S. Department of Justice failed to block the vertical merger. The DOJ had argued the deal could raise fees for rival distributors, reduce competition, and slow innovation.

AT&T won that court fight, but the plan fell apart under the weight of debt, a telecom-and-Hollywood culture mismatch, streaming upheaval, cord-cutting, and changing viewer habits. In 2021, AT&T spun off WarnerMedia.

WarnerMedia then merged with Discovery in 2022, creating Warner Bros. Discovery. The pressure still shows. As of Q2 2026, the company had about $29.7 billion in net debt, $8.7 billion in quarterly revenue, and $149 million in net income, according to Warner Bros. Discovery. At the same time, linear TV kept sliding and restructuring efforts were still underway.

Under CEO David Zaslav, Warner Bros. Discovery has focused on cutting costs, paying down debt, and reworking its streaming strategy. Max passed 140 million global subscribers in Q1 2026, according to Warner Bros. Discovery. For anyone who follows media mergers, this remains a cautionary story with more to reveal.

You can keep up with the latest through Warner Bros. Discovery’s earnings reports and updates from the Max platform.

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GTA 6 is already causing all kinds of controversies. Besides the expected ones about violence in video games, although this time even more justified by how uncomfortable it can be for some people to shoot people who look so real, some we weren’t expecting. Because the romance between Jason and Lucía has led to a completely unexpected controversy on social media. Since some people think the romance in the game could be considered a form of infidelity.

A dangerous romance

That’s how some people on social media see it, who believe that, because of the realism of the game (which forces us to go on dates, send messages, hold hands with the other character and have romantic gestures with them, if we want their romance to remain intact when the game ends), this can be considered a form of infidelity. Not allowing their partners to play it.

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That’s what one TikTok user has said, for example. “There is no way I’m going to let my fiancé play GTA 6. You literally have to be in a relationship with a girl in the game and send her messages, and she’ll get angry if you don’t reply. You have to take her on dates and you can have sex with her. Don’t let your boyfriend, fiancé or husband play GTA 6”. Making it clear that, from her point of view, this would be infidelity.

She isn’t the only one. And it’s not hard to find more. But in any case, all of this is completely optional: it’s possible to beat GTA 6 without having any romantic relationship between the characters, although that will substantially change the story and means, in the end, they don’t end up together. But of course, what’s more important? That Jason and Lucia end up together or that you don’t end up single?

Saber Interactive has shut down the Ori 3 rumor. Executive Tim Willits says the studio isn’t making the game and, just as important, doesn’t really have room for it anyway. Saber is already tied up with several major projects. That matches what Moon Studios CEO Thomas Mahler had said earlier, when he cast doubt on insider chatter claiming Saber Interactive had taken over the series.

Willits pointed to Saber’s crowded slate, which includes several big games already in motion, one of them connected to Keanu Reeves. From his point of view, the Ori 3 rumor simply doesn’t fit with what the studio is working on right now.

That Reeves project is widely believed to be a new AAA John Wick game that would use Keanu Reeves’ likeness and voice. Saber Interactive’s known lineup also includes Jurassic Park: Survival, Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and A Quiet Place. Put all of that together and it’s pretty easy to see why the studio says the Ori 3 rumor doesn’t add up.

Still, Ori is a massive franchise. Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps had sold more than 15 million copies by March 2025.

Moon Studios is now independent and focused on No Rest for the Wicked. Mahler has said he does have ideas for a third game, but Moon Studios has also made clear that the two existing entries already tell a complete arc, and no new sequel is currently in active development.

So if you were hoping for Ori 3, that’s where things stand. For now, there are still only the two existing Ori games, because a third one hasn’t been announced.

Sony has confirmed that starting in January 2028, every new PlayStation release, third-party games included, will stop shipping on physical discs. If you’re buying a brand-new PlayStation game after that, you won’t be picking up a boxed copy anymore.

According to Sony, this lines up with how people already shop. Nearly 80% of full-game purchases on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 during the last fiscal year were digital, and that climbed to 85% in Q1 2026. The company is now adding warnings to PlayStation 5 boxes and giving retailers a window to move over to download-code sales.

The backlash is already easy to spot: complaints, criticism across social media, and calls for a boycott.

Sony has also introduced an anti-harassment policy in Japan for support staff. Under that policy, people who are threatening, abusive, or plainly unreasonable can have their access limited, and in some cases Sony says the response could go as far as legal or criminal action.

If ownership matters to you, or if you buy discs so you can resell them, lend them out, collect them, or keep games preserved, this is something to keep an eye on.

Even more so because the Video Game History Foundation has warned that piracy could end up being the only practical way to preserve games, while Mexican lawmakers and a Dutch consumer group have raised concerns about competition and pricing. Microsoft and Nintendo, for their part, say they aren’t taking the same all-digital route.

So from January 2028 on, new PlayStation releases will be sold either through Sony’s digital store or at retail as download codes.

A well-regarded Weibo leaker says Apple could bring the iPhone 18 Pro in three color finishes when it unveils the phone on September 9.

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The one that jumps out is a deep red shade, referred to in the leak as Dark Cherry or Burgundy. It’s described as a wine red with a faint purple cast, and it sounds like the signature color Apple wants attached to this Pro cycle, the way the iPhone 17 Pro leaned on Cosmic Orange last year.

The same leak points to Light Blue, possibly called Sky Blue, and Silver as the other options. The darker neutral version is still up in the air, though, with different reports landing on either Dark Gray or Black. That matters more than it might seem at first, because a new finish is the kind of change people notice right away, much faster than a new chip or a camera tweak, even if leaked color names and renders often get the real-world look wrong once lighting, coating, and the texture of the frame enter the picture.

If you tend to upgrade your iPhone on a regular schedule, this is the sort of rumor to keep an eye on. Still, Apple hasn’t confirmed any final names, exact shades, or region-by-region availability.

We’ll probably get the complete picture at Apple’s event next week. Current reports point to pre-orders opening on Saturday, September 12, followed by retail availability on Friday, September 18, and some of those same reports tie the unusual Saturday timing to the 25th anniversary of September 11.

Take-Two Interactive says its GTA 6 leak investigation is narrowing. In recent US court filings, the publisher told the court the case is “rapidly evolving,” and that the work has moved past broad data requests into more specific legal action.

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Those filings say Take-Two has identified one additional Discord user, pulled in more identifying information on another, and learned more about the Discord servers that may have been used to spread or coordinate the leaks. Earlier in the case, the company had asked Discord, Microsoft, and X for user data. It also dropped a subpoena aimed at Google and YouTube, which suggests that route was no longer necessary.

The company has also asked to seal its latest subpoena, so the people being examined aren’t tipped off and potential evidence isn’t deleted or destroyed. Reports connect the broader campaign to “Cyberleek,” which allegedly used stolen GTA 6 footage to push a memecoin and made about $250,000 doing it. That points to a money play, not fan hype.

For anyone following GTA 6 closely, the scale here stands out. According to reports, leaks that started in mid-August 2026 grew from an initial 15 clips into more than 90 videos spread across platforms. Rockstar Games called the leaks “heartbreaking,” and Take-Two Interactive reportedly lost $2.83 billion before bouncing back after the official Netflix gameplay reveal.

GTA 6 is still scheduled for November 19, and pre-loads begin November 12.

Legends of Aria Eternal hits Steam on September 10. Emergent Worlds says that launch should put the long-running sandbox MMORPG in front of a much bigger audience, coming right after a recent playtest that was limited to backers.

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The big hook this time is the server model. There isn’t one official live-service world for everyone to funnel into. Players and communities can host their own worlds, change the rulesets, and even set up monetization how they want, while Emergent Worlds supports a volunteer-run “Unofficial Official Server” as a shared hub. The studio is also presenting Legends of Aria Eternal as a return to the original 2014 Shards Online Kickstarter vision, following the Legends of Aria rebrand, later design changes, and that abandoned blockchain and NFT detour. It’s buy-to-play, with no subscription and no microtransactions in the base game, and it adds crafting-driven top gear, skill-based progression, mounted combat, and faster skill gains.

If you’re into sandbox MMOs, this may be one to grab when it arrives. Still, with a history this tangled, the mood around it will probably stay cautiously optimistic for now, and a lot of players are going to judge it on whether this latest reset finally sticks. You’ll be able to get Legends of Aria Eternal on Steam starting September 10.

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Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi film Mickey 17 is suddenly back in the conversation. It’s started trending on HBO Max in the U.S. and has landed in Netflix top 10 lists in some international markets, based on the platforms’ own rankings, giving it a fresh wave of attention after a theatrical run that fell short.

It was Bong’s first feature since Parasite, and it wasn’t cheap. Reports put the budget at about $118 million, while worldwide box office came in around $133.3 million. That’s well below the roughly $236 million to $295 million that industry estimates usually say a movie at that scale needs to reach. Still, streaming has people looking at it again, and critics and fans are starting to treat it as one of the year’s messier, louder, more ambitious studio swings.

The film adapts Edward Ashton’s 2022 novel Mickey7. It follows Mickey, an “expendable” worker on a space-colonization mission who’s expected to die whenever the job requires it, then come back in a newly printed body with most of his memories still there. Robert Pattinson plays both Mickey 17 and Mickey 18, and a lot of the praise around the movie has gone to the way he handles the mix of dark comedy, panic, and existential dread.

Its trouble in theaters probably came from a few things hitting at once: marketing that was hard to pin down, release-date changes, and a genuinely strange blend of grotesque sci-fi, political satire, and ideas about identity, labor, corporate power, colonialism, and class. Those themes will feel familiar if you’ve seen Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer, Okja, and Parasite.

If you skipped Mickey 17 in theaters, this second life on streaming looks like a good reason to give it a shot. It’s on HBO Max in the U.S. and on Netflix in some international markets.

Star Trek: Shadow Frontier, a new Star Trek game, is set for 2027, and it pushes the series into survival horror and psychological thriller territory, one of the boldest genre turns the franchise has made in years.

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The reveal says Star Trek: Shadow Frontier is being developed by Bloober Team. Players step into the role of Ro Laren, with Michelle Forbes returning to voice the character after Ro crash-lands on a remote planet described as a graveyard for starships. The announcement also says the game blends exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat, using familiar Star Trek tools like the tricorder and phaser in a much darker survival setup.

For longtime Trek fans, the bigger story isn’t simply that another game is on the way. It’s that Shadow Frontier pulls away from the diplomacy, discovery, and optimism that usually define the series. Reaction so far has been split: some people see it as a smart way to widen what Star Trek games can be, while others think horror may run against the brand’s core identity.

If you’re open to seeing Star Trek push past its usual limits, Star Trek: Shadow Frontier looks like one to keep an eye on, especially because it follows 2026’s horror-leaning VR title Star Trek: Infection and shows up at a moment when Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy are both expected to wrap in 2027, leaving the next phase of live-action Star Trek a lot less clearly mapped out.

The announcement says Star Trek: Shadow Frontier will launch in 2027 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC through Steam.

Aliens hit its 40th anniversary in 2026, which put fresh attention back on James Cameron’s sequel, released on July 18, 1986, seven years after Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien.

Cameron didn’t try to repeat the first movie’s slow-burn horror. He pushed the series toward combat instead: pulse rifles, space marines, bigger set pieces, a faster pace. Even with all that, the movie still turns on Ellen Ripley’s bond with Newt on LV-426, and that relationship gives the whole thing its emotional center.

That’s a big part of why Aliens still gets cited as Cameron’s purest genre film, and as the sequel that reset the standard for sci-fi action. The box-office totals most people quote put the budget at about $18.5 million and the worldwide gross somewhere between roughly $131.1 million and $183.3 million. The Academy Awards gave the film seven Oscar nominations, then wins for Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Visual Effects. Sigourney Weaver’s Best Actress nomination was historic; she later lost to Marlee Matlin for Children of a Lesser God, but the nomination itself helped make genre acting easier to take seriously.

If you regularly go back to sci-fi action classics, this anniversary deserves some attention. New Alien films, games, and events are still keeping the franchise active, and Cameron said in 2025 that he’d only return if he had an idea that felt radically fresh. So if you’re coming back to Aliens now on current home-video and digital platforms, you’re revisiting the benchmark, the one bigger, louder movies still rarely top.