Lena Headey is reportedly being sued by her former agency for $1.5 million over unpaid commission fees relating to several projects, including her cut Thor: Love and Thunder role.

Variety reports that U.K. agency Troika, who previously represented Headey, has filed a lawsuit against the actor over outstanding commission fees connected to multiple projects. The agency is seeking $1.5 million in total, which includes $500,000 – around 7% of her fee – for her earnings on Thor 4, though she does not appear in the final cut of the Marvel movie.

According to court documents obtained by the outlet, Headey joined Troika in 2005 and remained on their books until 2020, the same year the agency rebranded as YMU. However, the company claims that Headey owes them a hefty commission under the terms of their agreement, while Headey alleges that she never actually signed a contract with Troika.

Headey also claims that Troika was not involved in the negotiations regarding her now-axed role on Thor: Love and Thunder, as director Taika Waititi personally reached out to her about the part. In addition to her MCU fees, the agency is said to be seeking at least $300,000 from her lead role on 9 Bullets, and $650,000 for her titular role on scrapped Showtime series Rita.

Headey has allegedly disputed all of Troika's claims for these commission fees in her legal filings, asserting that the agency has been correctly paid up for the projects they had a hand in while they represented her. It's also noted that Troika wasn't her sole agent and therefore didn't lead all negotiations because she was simultaneously signed with CAA in the U.S.

It's unclear why Headey's role was cut from Marvel's upcoming Thor: Love and Thunder, but she wasn't the only actor to have scenes removed during post-production. Christian Bale recently told Prensa Escenario that he had filmed scenes with Peter Dinklage's dwarf king Eitri, and Jeff Goldblum's Grandmaster, but both encounters ended up as deleted scenes.

In addition to these cut cameos, some scenes with the existing cast also ended up on the cutting room floor. Bale, who will be making his MCU debut as Gorr the God Butcher in Thor: Love and Thunder, said that one scene was excluded because it was deemed a little "too extreme" for the movie, while plans for a Kate Bush dance scene also never came to fruition.

Thor: Love and Thunder will release on July 8 and sees Chris Hemsworth's character take on Gorr with the help of Natalie Portman's Jane Foster, who will wield the Mjolnir as Mighty Thor.

Adele Ankers-Range is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.

The below is a spoiler-free review of Stranger Things Season 4, Part 2, which is now streaming on Netflix.

It may have initially seemed like a head-scratcher when Netflix revealed that Part 2 of Stranger Things Season 4 would consist of only two episodes, as opposed to Part 1’s seven, but that doesn’t mean the hit’s big finale is a quick watch. Get ready to set aside four hours for just about all the Upside Down madness you can handle; and you can rest assured that there’s never a dull moment in those jam-packed four hours. This is Stranger Things as its most emotional, thrilling, and yes, ambitious, a word I used a lot in my review of Part 1, but it holds true even more so for the last two episodes. It also happens to be Stranger Things at its very best, guaranteed to give fans everything they want and a whole lot more.

It’s hard to talk about too much without getting into spoilers (and even though this review is running on the day the episodes debut, we’re still going to play it safe here in case you don’t have four hours to immediately jump back into the Upside Down), but we can say that it’s nice to finally see the branching-narrative style of storytelling that was established in the first part finally converge in a way that feels incredibly satisfying. The first seven episodes constantly jumped from California (two storylines in California, to be exact) to Hawkins to Russia, and while there’s still a good amount of that in Part 2, for the most part, it manages to bring our players together in a way that pays off the patience that was required for Part 1.

My biggest complaint in Part 1 was that the Mike, Will, Jonathan, and Argyle subplot in California didn’t quite feel as in-step, tonally, with the rest of the season, and while these detours weren’t bad, they felt less necessary than what the larger gang was doing in Hawkins, or Hopper’s attempts to escape a Russian prison. The good news is that this is largely remedied in Part 2 – they even manage to justify Argyle’s involvement beyond mere comedic relief. And Will, who was pretty underserved in Part 1, gets a few emotional scenes, including one gut-wrenching one in Episode 8 that is easily Noah Schnapp’s most impressive showcase on the show thus far.

In fact, there’s a lot of that going on in Part 2, with several actors, including Caleb McLaughlin, Gaten Matarazzo, Joe Keery, Sadie Sink, Millie Bobby Brown, Natalia Dyer, Joseph Quinn, and David Harbour, giving some series-best performances. There’s a ton of effects-heavy action and exciting plot momentum, but one of the most impressive things about these two episodes is how many moments of tenderness it manages to squeeze in between various characters, with more than a couple of tear-jerking moments.

While the runtimes may seem overwhelming for some (1.5 hours for Episode 8 and 2.5 hours for Episode 9, for those curious about the math), the result is that not one bit of it feels rushed. The action, emotional beats, and the many answered questions about the show’s lore are given plenty of time to breathe, without any of the elements undermining each other. And, since the show has racked up quite the sprawling cast at this point, it feels important to avoid giving any one character the shaft, and Part 2 does well to honor just about every central player.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel a tad bit unwieldy at times, though. Once again, the Hawkins storyline is the strongest, and it’s extraordinarily good at building tension. For the first time in a long time, it truly feels like we could lose some of these characters, and it makes for a nerve-wracking watch. Still, in the middle of that tension, it’ll occasionally halt its own momentum for a detour to the Russian storyline (which takes the California subplot’s place as feeling the least necessary in this installment). It might’ve felt a little more manageable if Episode 9 were split up into two episodes, instead of giving us such a packed-to-the-brim behemoth of a finale.

But, taking Season 4 in as a whole, it’s pretty astonishing how much creators Matt and Ross Duffer were able to accomplish. Both Episodes 8 and 9 (9 in particular) feel like big blockbuster movies in every way, especially in the effects, stunts, and production design. From the deserts of California to the slime of the Upside Down, everything simply looks incredible, and sleeker than Stranger Things has ever looked – not that it was ever a slouch in the visuals department. The ambition that marks Season 4 extends to every single part of these episodes, especially the storyline.

Speaking of which, longtime fans can rest assured, we’re continuing to get a ton more answers in regards to the Upside Down, Eleven, Vecna, and Hawkins, while still opening up plenty more to explore in the final season. It’s here that the Duffers’ master plan really starts to show, even managing to connect antagonists from previous seasons like the Mind Flayer to what’s happening now. And speaking of antagonists, Vecna remains a formidable one, as chilling and menacing as ever.

As for where it all ends up, let’s just say we hope we don’t have quite as long a wait for the final season as we had to for this one. It doesn’t conclude on a cliffhanger per se, but it does leave us by teasing just how much will need to be tackled in Season 5. It ends up feeling a lot like Avengers: Infinity War, with higher stakes than ever before and setting up what has to be an even bigger final season. In short, bring on the Endgame.

One of the fundamental parts of your Minecraft experience is building your forever home. You might be focused on the basics, such as building cute houses (we see you, cottagecore), and simplicity may be key for you. On the other hand, you could be the type to continually expand and use your home as a canvas to display the extent of your travels. Either way, if and when you're stumped for ideas on how to add a flourish to the bland and stereotypical wooden four walls approach, you can start here from our list of 8 favorite Minecraft House builds.

If you're just starting out, here are three simple starter house bases to consider:

(Video via MrMirror)

Below you'll find some of our top Minecraft house ideas; from simple and cute builds, to elaborate castles, it's time to make your next house epic; whatever that means for you.

1. Farmstead

A natural progression for many people due to the importance of farming as you get further into your game, a farmstead is a wonderful way to naturally expand your home. From building enclosures and stables for your animals, to extravagant waterways that flow through portions of your house on the way to moisturize your crops, you can get really creative whilst remaining functional here.

With the limited scope that these kinds of builds allow, farmsteads often lend themselves to being cute, quaint, and quirky projects that blend in very well regardless of the environment that you choose to build them in.

2. Mansion

For those wanting to live more lavishly, a mansion is an excellent project to display the wealth of resources and items that you have accumulated as you’ve explored. As you would expect, the more detailed and expansive the build, the harder it will be to execute in Survival, but if you plan it out you can easily have a modular approach to your mansion; build out room by room, floor by floor, and add the connective tissue and aesthetic decorations after the fact.

Whilst you can always discover and take over the humongous Woodland Mansions that spawn in your world, it will more than likely feel like a hollow victory. Only through hard work and perseverance can the decadence of a mansion feel truly earned.

3. Castle

The age-old build that everyone has tried at one point or another. Whether you’re an expert builder or you barely know how to build a house in Minecraft, a castle has likely crossed your mind as a long-term goal. Particularly excellent alongside other medieval-style builds (even more so if you apply a complimentary texture pack), castles can feel restrictive in your approach to building them.

Shake off those constraints! You can choose to create a wholly unique castle, or you can take inspiration from famous castles from real life or in fiction. Be it Windsor Castle in England, Kaer Morhen from The Witcher series, or Hogwarts Castle from Harry Potter, choose something that you have a personal affinity for. Not only will it give you the drive to continue with these lengthy builds, but it can also give you specific elements to build off of. Start with the Great Hall of Hogwarts, the drawbridge of Castle Greyskull, whatever it takes to start the process with a memorable section, and flesh it out from there.

4. Modern House

With the structures that are naturally generated in Minecraft (at least at the time of writing), almost all of them skew heavily toward rudimentary, medieval-style structures with wooden supports and stony accents. Attempting to build with similar materials, which just so happen to be those most abundant early on in your gameplay, it can begin to feel iterative and too similar to the last time you started a new world.

Having that in mind, why not make some bold choices, not only in the design and layout of your house, but the materials used? Make a mark on the world that stands out, as opposed to blending in. With many modern houses, you see architects aiming to build a cool house that's unique. Get your own architect's hat on and be weird! After all, Minecraft being the ultimate creativity tool should lend you some amount of personal expression. (If you're just beginning to plan your modern house build, we like this easy tutorial video on how to build your first modern house in Minecraft).

5. Treehouse

A seemingly simple build idea that can actually be quite difficult to pull off effectively, treehouses can be an eco-friendly way of leaving your footprint on the world. Often quite small and cute (think an Ewok hut in Return of the Jedi), you’ll likely want to use all-natural materials for these builds so that they blend in as much as possible.

These can be particularly fun if you are on a multiplayer server, where you aim to hide from your fellow players. For a game all about digging down, it’s not very often that you think to look up. Throw in the benefit of often having much better and wider views of your surrounding area, and there seem to only be upsides to crafting a home high in the treeline. To get down, you can use vines to be as inconspicuous as possible, or ladders/waterfalls if your build is aiming to be on the larger side.

To see all the kinds of treehouses you can create, check out our Minecraft Treehouse Ideas too.

6. Underwater House

If you like having a fish tank at home in real life, why not construct your Minecraft house beneath the waves? Keep in mind that underwater builds often require a lot of planning ahead and a fair amount of late-game materials such as Sponge to help efficiently clear the water once you seal the room.

Also keep in mind for underwater houses, you are often required to build a tunnel to get to the house, either straight down through the water or underground, and then up into the house. Either way, this permits you to come up with some unique ideas on how to conceal the entrance so those who don’t look too closely won’t even realize you’re dwelling beneath them. Sneaky, challenging and fun.

7. Sky Island

If living beneath the waves doesn’t sound appealing to you, how about up in the clouds? Creating a sky base has many advantages: you’ll be away from most threats (besides gravity), it’s quiet, and you'll get some breathtaking views.

Using a lot of Dirt and Stone, build up and create your own perfect spot in the sky. What you’ll definitely want to have is a source of water to let you swim up and down from your base without the risk of lethal fall damage, so a tip is to incorporate it into an artificial stream to accentuate your island in the air.

8. Hidden Underground Base

The perfect fit for the more discreet amongst you, having a base underground makes you completely undetectable from the surface. This advantage is even more exaggerated should you use a Redstone contraption with hidden doors and moving walls to make your entrance appear completely natural – nothing amiss.

Here's an underground house when locked:

This can even be beneficial in solo play, as having a Redstone-controlled secret base ensures that no Mobs can break down a door and invade your private safe space.

Here's the underground house when opened:

Want More Minecraft?

• Best Minecraft Build Ideas (if you want to start even broader)
• Minecraft Legendary Collaborative Builds (for further inspo)
• How to Build a House in Minecraft and full Building Guide (for any beginners, of course)

What are your favorite house types to build lately? What's been a challenge? Let us know below.

Samuel Heaney is a freelance writer with expertise in gaming guides and all things Minecraft. You can follow him on Twitter.

The following incredible Minecraft builds come from the rich world of Harry Potter. Hogsmeade, Azkaban and of course plenty of amazing renditions of Hogwarts itself have all been faithfully recreated by Harry Potter superfans. Is this list from 2012? Maybe. Is it still cool? Definitely.

1. Harry as Pixel Art (Cute!)

2. More Pixel Art! Dumbledore and Fawkes

3. Weasley’s House, The Burrow

A faithful recreation of the Weasley’s eccentric house is still one of the most impressive Harry Potter builds in Minecraft today.

4. Quidditch Pitch!

5. The Room of Requirement

6. The Picturesque Hogsmeade Village, But Make it Blocky

7. Azkaban

The massive recreation of Azkaban has lots of imaginative details, like the pumpkin head “dementor” guards.

8. Hogwarts Express

This Hogwarts Express might not actually move, but its blocky steam trail and fully-modeled interior still make it very impressive.

9. Da Castle!

10. Floating Candles

11. Bottom of Grand Staircase

12. Bell Towers & Herbology Greenhouses

13. Chess!

Who wouldn't want to build the chess game that helped the heroes to victory in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone??

14. Knight Bus

Impressive stuff, right? Be sure to leave a comment below if we missed any other great Harry Potter fan builds.

Also see:

• 15 Cool Ideas for What to Build in Minecraft
• 7 Treehouse Ideas in Minecraft
• Awe-inspiring Skyrim-themed Minecraft builds

Justin leads IGN's Audience Development team and is part of IGN's Game Scoop! He also played an unhealthy amount of Minecraft. You can follow him on Twitter.

It’s a new era for the world of Formula 1, with some of the biggest changes seen in the sport in four decades shaking up not only the status quo, but also the spines of the drivers as teams wrestle to rein in the engineering quirks of this year’s new cars. Codemasters has followed suit with F1 22, stopping short of infusing this season’s back-busting porpoising phenomenon into its handling model but tinkering just enough with its reliably robust annual racer that it does feel sufficiently refreshed in a number of the right areas – even if the overall package is bound to be a pretty familiar one to returning fans.

Rest assured, there is more to F1 22 than simply a stable of the latest cars and the new Miami circuit. Visually it’s treading water this year but small touches, like neat new post-race clips of the battle-worn cars and updated camera angles on the old podium celebrations, slightly rejuvenate parts of the Codemasters F1 series that have been stagnant for many years. The new race engineer voice and the ability to switch out commentator David Croft for Alex Jacques similarly help set F1 22 apart from the previous F1 games, which have been feeling increasingly recycled in this department. A new adaptive AI mode joins the standard and already huge list of driver aids and accessibility options, and seems to keep the pack within striking distance of less-experienced racers. This should make for more exciting racing regardless of skill. I watched my eight-year-old duke it out with the adaptive AI and while I can’t quite observe the full difference between the two available levels of it, it did seem to keep him in the hunt without making the AI rollover entirely.

Bigger bullet points, like the welcome inclusion of the F1 sprint race format and slick VR support for PC players, are obviously harder to miss. The F1 series is quite late to the table when it comes to VR support so I think it’s unlikely veterans of other, existing VR racing games will be wowed in quite the same way we were some years ago – but the novelty value of having it available in the official F1 series is very strong. With its dedication to replicating the minutiae of the real thing – from the paddock to the track – the F1 series has been a wonderfully immersive recreation of the world’s premier motorsport for some time. Experiencing it through a VR lens is doubly so.

However, not every new feature of F1 22 earns a spot on the podium.

Pad Toys for Life

With Codemasters confirming earlier this year that further instalments of the ‘Braking Point’ story mode it introduced in F1 2021 are on a two-year cadence, F1 22 does not include the next chapter of the studio’s airbrushed yet earnest take on a fictional, behind-the-scenes F1 fairy tale. In its place is F1 Life, a lifestyle-oriented mode focused on customising your F1 driver’s outfit and living areas, but it feels so vapid that it largely amounts to little more than a monetisable backdrop for the main menu screens.

F1 22 puts the focus on this new mode by throwing you straight into tinkering with F1 Life’s default settings on first launch. The good thing about this is that afterward… it can be entirely ignored, and doing so ultimately doesn’t diminish anything about the typically robust racing experience around it. At best F1 Life seems like a catch-all to justify a steady stream of rewards for your time playing, only those rewards are often just bits of furniture and floor tiles. At worst, it’s a mechanism that’s here to shake some loose change out of people willing to hand over a few bucks for a cosmetic trinket. Other players can visit your space, but I don’t really understand why they’d want to. It’s probably a sad sign of the times that while previous F1 games featured iconic cars from the sport’s history, F1 22 features an extensive set of… designer rugs, lounges, and lamps. No one’s been excited about a lamp since Jafar played fullback for Agrabah.

In theory I understand the desire to capture a taste of that lucrative, off-track luxury that real-life F1 superstars get to enjoy – and, yes, I did get momentarily distracted by the V6 coffee table – but I don’t know if adding interior decorating and the ability to dress your driver avatar like an aspiring Puma activewear influencer was the perfect way to do that.

The addition of collectable supercars feels a little closer to the kinds of extravagant toys real-life F1 drivers can afford, and there is at least a gameplay component attached to these. Taking some broad inspiration from the Pirelli Hot Laps programme that runs at real grands prix – where F1 drivers are conscripted to hurl expensive exotics around the tracks with various VIPs aboard – F1 22 includes high-end supercars from Ferrari, AMG, Aston Martin, and McLaren for both hot-lapping, and a selection of bespoke driving challenges. They’re an interesting novelty – very different from anything present in previous F1 games – but in practice they do become a bit one-note and I eventually found myself opting to skip them. Through no fault of anyone, the supercars themselves are comparatively soggy when measured up to the purpose-built open-wheelers that represent the pinnacle of current F1 engineering, but they do convey a decent enough sense of speed, grip, and weight when compared to their contemporaries in rival racers. The drifting is surprisingly unspectacular, though; a severe lack of smoke leaves it feeling oddly sterile.

Rims Real Big, Pockets Real Big

The real stars of F1 22, of course, are the new F1 cars, which are the sleekest looking in many years, though saddled with a few interesting handling idiosyncrasies that demand some adjustments from F1 2021.

With their bigger wheels and tyres, plus their added bulk, 2022’s F1 cars are the heaviest they’ve ever been. They’re also lower and stiffer, with less top-body downforce and a renewed focus on ground effect aerodynamics sucking the cars into the asphalt the faster they go. In F1 22 this has translated to cars that feel like they’ve lost a fraction of their nimbleness and feel especially stiff attacking kerbs and humps. Additionally, I’ve found I’ve needed to be even more delicate on the throttle coming out of corners than in previous years, though they also sometimes seem a little more prone to understeer coming into them. The upshot is a handling model that I’d hesitate to say is better than that of the old cars of F1 2021 and previous editions, but it is one that feels credibly in-line with the known characteristics of the new ones. It’s just different, and the nuances of the new cars are – at a minimum – an interesting challenge to tackle.

However, while some noticeable changes have been injected into the handling, the real meat of F1 22 – the excellent My Team mode first introduced in F1 2020 – remains mostly the same. Campaign through GPs, complete R&D, juggle finances; if you’ve played F1 2020 or F1 2021 you’ll know what to expect. There are a couple of nice amendments, though, like the new choice to start your first year of My Team as a richly-backed operation with pre-upgraded facilities and a fat enough bank balance to lure a 45-year-old Mark Webber out of his comfortable retirement. The F1 series has always been one of the few racers that can make scrapping for a position down the order thrilling, but having the ability to tussle with the top teams straight away makes a lot of sense for returning players who’ve steered their F1 teams from minnows to megastars multiple times already. Sponsorship decals no longer disappearing off your car despite re-signing existing partners is nice too; it’s a small fix, but it was always annoying having to manually put them back on mid-season, even after rolling over their contracts.