An audition for the 2002 live-action Scooby-Doo movie, which James Gunn wrote, led to a role in a high-profile superhero project 20 years later. That's the story of Lochlyn Munro, who will play a detective in Gunn's upcoming Peacemaker TV series.

Munro auditioned to play Shaggy in the first Scooby-Doo movie, a role that ultimately went to Matthew Lillard. But 20 years later Gunn recognized Munro again when he saw the actor's audition tape for a role in Peacemaker.

"I ended up in [Peacemaker] because when [Gunn] saw my tape, he remembered that I was one of his choices for Shaggy," Munro said on The Dave and Creech Show, according to Slash Film. "So, I went in – Obviously, [Matthew] Lillard was the perfect choice for that character. But that's kind of how he went, 'Oh, yeah, I want Lochlyn in this, because I remember he was one of my choices for Scooby-Doo.' Twenty years later, isn't that weird?"

Munro will play a detective named Larry Fitzgibbon in Peacemaker. As Slash Film points out, this is an original character created by Gunn. The character's last name, Fitzgibbon, is a reference to Gunn's "oldest friend" as explained in this Instagram post from Gunn in 2016.

Peacemaker is a spinoff of James Gunn's The Suicide Squad following the psychopathic, patriotic mercenary of the same name played by John Cena. Peacemaker will debut on January 13, 2022, on HBO Max and the first season will consist of eight episodes starring Cena.

Peacemaker will also include another hero named Vigilante. You can read up on Vigilante's abilities and backstory to see how the DC Comics character fits into the DCEU.

Here is everything new on HBO Max in November 2021 including the season 3 finale of Doom Patrol and the Will Smith movie King Richard.

Petey Oneto is a freelance writer for IGN.

The future of Super Smash Bros. hangs in the balance as Masahiro Sakurai contemplates what's next.

In an interview with Japanese publication Famitsu which IGN has independently translated, Sakurai spoke about the development of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and how it could or couldn't continue without him.

"I’m not thinking about a sequel,” Sakurai told Famitsu following the release of Sora, the final Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC character. And while Sakurai says he was never thinking about a sequel during development, he also "can't say this is definitely the last Smash Bros."

But even if a team decides to develop a new Smash Bros. game, Sakurai admits that he "can't see any way right now to produce Smash Bros. without me."

Super Smash Bros. is Nintendo's ambitious fighting game series that pits iconic Nintendo characters against each other. In recent entries, Super Smash Bros. has brought in famous guest characters like Ryu, Cloud, and most recently Sora.

Nintendo traditionally has had a Super Smash Bros. entry for every one of its major consoles since the Nintendo 64. However, what direction will the series go after the Nintendo Switch's lifecycle? Will there continue to be new entries and characters, or will Ultimate simply be ported over and over again?

For now, though, Sakurai is taking a much-deserved rest.

Just because Sakurai announced the end of his involvement with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. doesn't mean he will stop making other games in the future. He was the designer for Kid Icarus: Uprising on Nintendo 3DS, after all.

For more on the end of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate read about how the final DLC fighter, Sora, eventually made his way into the game.

George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @yinyangfooey

Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series has found its Fire Lord. Daniel Dae Kim, who's known for appearing in Lost and Hawaii Five-O, will play Ozai, the ruler of the Fire Nation and father to Zuko and Azula, in the live-action adaptation.

Kim has previous experience in the world of Avatar, voicing General Fond in one episode of the original show and a video game adaptation.

“I do have the power. I have all the power in the world!”

Netflix’s live action Avatar: The Last Airbender has found its Fire Lord Ozai: Daniel Dae Kim (Lost, Hawaii Five-0) pic.twitter.com/9zYxVuiSLo

— Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) November 3, 2021

Netflix says Kim is joining the series as a regular, and says his character, "demands everyone live up to his impossible standards, especially his teenaged son, Prince Zuko. Ozai’s drive to conquer and unite the world under firebender rule is a family burden—he believes that it’s his destiny to finish a war started by his ancestors."

We learned the main cast for Netflix's Avatar earlier this year, which includes Gordon Cormier as Aang, Kiawentiio as Katara, Ian Ousley as Sokka, and Dallas Liu as Zuko.

Netflix first announced the live-action adaptation in 2018, when Avatar creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael DiMartino were on board to helm the series. However, the original creators left last year due to creative differences with Netflix. Now, Albert Kim is serving as the project's showrunner, alongside The Lego Movie's Dan Lin, Walker's Lindsey Liberatore, and Swamp Thing's Michael Goi.

This live-action project is far from the only Avatar project in the works. Nickelodeon has revealed plans to create an Avatar Airbender universe with multiple series and shows with the original creators. The first project is set to be an animated theatrical film. We also recently learned that a new Square Enix studio is working on an Avatar mobile game.

Logan Plant is a freelance writer for IGN. You can find him on Twitter @LoganJPlant.

(Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images)

Marvel's Avengers hasn't had the warmest reputation since it launched last year, but now we've got some words from Square Enix's president about its own internal reception.

In Square Enix's annual report for 2021, president Yosuke Matsuda says that Marvel's Avengers was an ambitious GaaS (Games as a Service) release. However, Avengers was not as successful as the company would have liked.

"We overcame a variety of unexpected difficulties in the final phase of the game’s development, including needing to transition to work-from-home due to the pandemic. We were able to surmount these challenges and release the game, but it has unfortunately not proven as successful as we would have liked," Matsuda says.
Matsuda said Square Enix would learn from its experience with Avengers and work to produce games that "mesh with the unique attributes and tastes of our studios and development teams."

"Nonetheless, taking on the GaaS model highlighted issues that we are likely to face in future game development efforts such as the need to select game designs that mesh with the unique attributes and tastes of our studios and development teams," said Matsuda. "While the new challenge that we tackled with this title produced a disappointing outcome, we are certain that the GaaS approach will grow in importance as gaming becomes more service oriented."

While Matsuda doesn't outright say it, it looks like he thinks that Crystal Dynamics's pedigree and particular skillset just didn't mesh well with the GaaS service model of Marvel's Avengers. After all, the studio is best known for single-player games like its Tomb Raider reboot. The developer is also working with The Initiative on the Perfect Dark reboot, another presumably single-player game.

As if this revelation wasn't bad enough, yesterday Crystal Dynamics removed paid XP boosters from the game's in-game marketplace after fan backlash, apologizing that it didn't listen sooner.

George Yang is a freelance news writer for IGN

Update: According to a Bloomberg report, the unannounced game in question was being developed by Mafia 3 studio Hangar 13 and was code-named Volt.

The report goes on to say that the game had been in development since 2017, and had troubles with reboots, technological hiccups, and COVID-19. The studio's employees will met to discuss next steps on Thursday.

Original story:

Games get canceled all the time, and while we occasionally hear about them via official announcements or reporting, more often they are canceled before they ever reach the news. We got a rare glimpse into the process during Take-Two's earnings today, which revealed that an unannounced game cancellation cost the company $53 million.

The company cites the cancellation in its earnings as part of an "impairment charge," which in releases like these means that the company had assets that it now finds are unexpectedly worth a whole lot less than they previously valued them at. For example, say GameStop buys a lot of amiibo, expecting to sell them for a certain amount of money. Then, sudddenly, Nintendo cancels amiibo support for its games and no one wants to buy those amiibo anymore. GameStop might report an impairment charge on its amiibo for the amount of money it expects to lose by putting them on heavy discount just to get them out of its warehouse.

In Take-Two's case, this effectively means that it spent about $53 million on a game it was making, but no longer expects to be able to do anything sellable with the things it spent that money on.

When reached for comment, Take-Two declined to give further detail as to what the canceled game was. Though the earnings indicated the title was unannounced, one possibility is that it could have been the long-hoped-for Bully 2, though there's no evidence to confirm this. Another possibility is Agent, a Cold War espionage thriller that did get originally announced at E3 2009. Its website was shut down just last month without any explanation. It also appears to have been deleted from Rockstar's games section on its website, and its trademark was abandoned in 2018.

Whatever the case, $53 million is a hefty amount to lose on a game, even if it is just a fraction of what the company makes in a quarter (in this case, $985 million in net bookings). It's also a not-insignificant chunk of what it takes to make some of Take-Two's biggest titles. Borderlands 3, for instance, is said to have cost around $95 million to make, plus $140 million for its DLC — though it was reportedly massively over budget.

Whatever it was, Take-Two still has plenty more games on deck for the next few years, and has repeatedly given guidance that it's ramping up game production, including on "immersive core" releases similar to 2K sports titles and GTA 5. So even if we've lost one game we never knew we had, there are many, many more games queued up to take its place.

Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.