Does Robert Pattinson as Batman make you think it'd be awesome to see him square off against his old Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart as the Joker? Well, don't get your hopes up. In an interview with Variety, Stewart briefly entertained the idea but squashed hopes for her to ever inhabit the oversized shoes of the clown prince of crime.

The idea started with a social media campaign to cast Stewart alongside her old Twilight counterpart Pattinson, who stars as the titular dark knight in the upcoming The Batman film directed by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield, War for the Planet of the Apes).

“I love the energy behind that,” Stewart told Variety. “It’s really been done so well. I feel like, maybe, we don’t traipse over, but I love that gusto. Let’s figure something else out. I’m totally down to play a freaky, scary person.”

Stewart reiterated her opinion when asked again if that was a hard "no."

“Not ‘no,’ but not the most stoked I’ve ever been. Let’s do something new," Stewart said.

Stewart and Pattinson are certainly plenty far removed from their roots as Twilight's breakout stars 13 years ago. Stewart's most recent film, "Spencer," casts her as the late Princess Diana during the crumbling of her marriage to Prince Charles. Her next project is David Cronenberg's "Crimes of the Future," which follows a performance artist in a world where humanity has evolved to develop new types of organs.

Meanwhile, Pattinson's star has risen even further, landing him starring roles in Christopher Nolan's Tenet, Netflix's The King, and Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse alongside Willem Dafoe.

As for The Batman, we'll be seeing Pattinson square off against the Riddler and Colin Farrel's Penguin, two of his oldest nemeses. We got a huge new look at the film during DC FanDome, including a new trailer.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/caped brew-sader for IGN. Brood with him on Twitter.

Facebook is reportedly planning to change its name in an effort to reflect its work building the "metaverse," The Verge reports, citing a source familiar with the matter.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly plans to announce the name change at the company's Connect conference on October 28, if not sooner. The name change could signal Facebook's intentions to grow further beyond a social media company and into more of a tech conglomerate. With Facebook owning Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus VR devices, and other brands, the name change will likely organize every group under one umbrella, similar to Google's change to Alphabet in 2015.

Zuckerberg has previously commented on Facebook's intentions to expand into different technology and the metaverse. He told The Verge earlier this year that "we will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company.”

The Verge also reports that the name is a closely guarded secret, even among Facebook's senior leadership. One theory is that it will take its name from Facebook's unreleased VR platform, Horizon Worlds, previously known as Facebook Horizons.

Facebook's rebranding could also have an impact on the negative perception of the company as a major source of misinformation. Earlier this month, a whistleblower (and former employee of Facebook) testified that the company prioritized profit over the well-being of its users, and leaked confidential documents related to her allegations.

Some of the whistleblower's most notable claims include that Facebook was aware its product was having a negative impact on people's health, particularly teen mental health. The whistleblower also alleged that Facebook softened its regulations on misinformation after the 2020 election, just before the January 6 riot in Washington D.C., Vox reports.

Even prior to 2021, Facebook was frequently mired in controversy. The infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal showed that Facebook had exposed the data of 87 million accounts to the political consulting firm working for the Trump campaign. A lawsuit was filed in 2018 over the data-mining scandal and more recently today the DC Attorney General announced that Mark Zuckerberg had been added as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Even Facebook's technology has found itself under intense criticism. Facebook formally apologized last month after the platform's AI labeled videos of black men under "primates."

What exactly is the metaverse? It depends on who you ask. The founder of Pokemon Go creator Niantic called it a "dystopian nightmare," but Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, who received $1 billion earlier this year to help build Epic's own metaverse, believes it will be an asynchronous and persistent virtual universe where every brand, company, independent users, and independent creators can be interconnected. Imagine Ready Player One's Oasis, but where Fortnite and Instagram exist in the same code.

It's definitely complicated, and likely years and years away from becoming a reality thanks to the diverse and unregulated nature of the internet and different tech platforms, to say nothing of convincing major brands to participate in a virtual world. The term "metaverse" has also been used by NFT and cryptocurrency groups to describe their vision of a shared universe where a unique item in one game/app can be used in another. However, the NFT and cryptocurrency community is so rife with scams and dodgy promises that even Steam has seen fit to ban all games with any NFT or cryptocurrency integration. Lucky for them, Sweeney says they're cool with Epic.

Joseph Knoop is a writer/producer/non-fungullible for IGN. Become a part of his meh-taverse on Twitter.

Night Teeth premieres Wednesday, Oct. 20 on Netflix.

An aspiring young musician from East L.A. takes his brother's limo shift to earn some extra cash and winds up inadvertently hosting two beautiful vampire assassins on their kill rounds in a moderately successful undead take on Michael Mann's Collateral called Night Teeth. Despite its lush Los Angeles production and charming performances from Bumblebee's Jorge Lendeborg Jr. and former Disney TV star Debby Ryan, Night Teeth takes a simple premise and bogs it down with unnecessary lore and vampire politics, robbing the tale of the bulk of its bite.

Night Teeth certainly has style to spare, as director Adam Randall and cinematographer Eben Bolter make the visuals (and bottles) pop while the new wave/trip hop pulses from Drum & Lace and Ian Hultquist help create a surreal dream-like atmosphere, like the kind felt in 2011's Drive. Only through Netflix these days could this story and this cast get such a lavish neon noir treatment, and the vibe does help sell the the idea of a vampiric underworld operating just underneath the societal surface of L.A. The end result, though, is one of candy-coated mayhem rather than something with true sinister resonance.

During this fateful fang-filled night, Lendeborg Jr.'s Benny finds himself traversing a gamut of emotions as he finds himself embroiled in the carnage caused by Ryan's Blaire and Lucy Fry's more psychotically unhinged Zoe. Benny freaks, frets, folds, and even briefly finds himself a participant at home as someone enjoying the perks of being a VIP.

All the while, Benny and Blaire (who's the kinder of the two bloodsucking clients) begin to seriously dig each other and a quirky romance percolates. It may seem silly to slip this flirty bit of fluff into the mix, but it works, mostly because of the two leads and their ability to present a believable connection.

Meanwhile, the rest of the story is a bit of a mess, as a vampire boss, Victor (Game of Thrones' Alfie Allen), takes his shot at wiping out the other vampire bosses in a power grab, using Blaire and Zoe as his weapons. And then there's Benny's brother, Jay (Raúl Castillo), who's on a mission to stop Victor from wrecking a generations-spanning truce between humans and vampires.

This chaos allows Night Teeth to throw in some fun, but also ultimately wasteful, cameos. The most notable ones are Megan Fox and Sydney Sweeney (Euphoria, The White Lotus), but the actor who seems to have to most fun with his pop-in is Heels/Vikings' Alexander Ludwig. Regardless, the famous faces that make their brief showings are more distracting than engaging. Even Allen, as the film's villain, feels bland and adrift here.

Antagonist-wise, Fry's Zoe is the better foil as a vampire who freely admits that immorality can cause one to go a touch insane. Plus, as Blaire's sire, Zoe becomes an obstacle for both her bestie and Benny as they begin to develop feelings for each other. Fry provides much needed zest and zeal for Night Teeth, operating as a nice juxtaposition to the luxuriant music and imagery.

This doesn't mean the character pays off the way she should, or that the movie isn't still hampered by the vampire hunter side story, but having the main three be an entertaining trio helps this ride get a more-than-fair rating.

It's been a rollercoaster week for Netflix. As the streaming giant continues to bask in the success of Squid Game, it must also contend with the ongoing blowback from The Closer, Dave Chapelle's recent special that has drawn the ire of transgender employees.

A coordinated protest scheduled for Wednesday saw staffers engage in a virtual workout while promoting trans charities. It's timed with a public rally organized by activist Ashlee Marie Preston, which is taking place outside of Netflix's office on Vine St.

Jameela Jamil, Colton Haynes, Elliot Page, and other actors also lent their support to the protest in a video released this morning while Netflix employees and supporters took to Twitter to promote the cause. They asked supporters not to use Netflix today in solidarity for the walkout.

I stand with the trans, nonbinary, and BIPOC employees at Netflix fighting for more and better trans stories and a more inclusive workplace #NetflixWalkout https://t.co/LU8FPSBdwE

— Elliot Page (@TheElliotPage) October 20, 2021

#NetflixWalkout If you're not standing up for trans lives, you need to take a good look at who you ARE standing with. Good luck today everybody! ⚡️🎸⚡️

— Lilly Wachowski (@lilly_wachowski) October 20, 2021

The walkout follows a list of demands released by Netflix employees, which includes a new fund for trans and non-binary talent, harm reduction, and employee safety. The full list was published in a letter obtained by The Verge.

In preparation for the walkout, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos spoke with multiple outlets including Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, where he offered a public mea culpa and said that he "should have led with a lot more humanity."

"Obviously, I screwed up that internal communication," Sarandos told Variety. "Meaning, I had a group of employees who were definitely feeling pain and hurt from a decision we made. And I think that needs to be acknowledged up front before you get into the nuts and bolts of anything. I didn’t do that. That was uncharacteristic for me, and it was moving fast and we were trying to answer some really specific questions that were floating. We landed with some things that were much more blanket and matter-of-fact that are not at all accurate."

However, Sarandos says there are no plans to remove Chapelle's special from Netflix.

Chapelle's special first came under fire for targeting the trans community, with the comedian declaring himself "team TERF," slang for a disparate collection of anti-trans groups, among other assertions. The special quickly drew fire from workers, leading to the suspension of one employee and the firing of another.

"I want to make it clear, this situation isn't about Dave Chapelle," wrote one employee in the run-up to today's walkout, "it's about Netflix doing better."

Blogroll Image Credit: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images

Kat Bailey is a Senior News Editor at IGN

A chance meeting is part of the reason Sora from Kingdom Hearts joined Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as its final fighter.

In the latest Masahiro Sakurai Famitsu column, translated by @PushDustIn and @KodyNOKOLO on Twitter, the Smash director pulled back the curtain on Sora's inclusion.

According to the translation, Sakurai reiterated that getting Sora in the game was much more difficult than other fighters. However, Sakurai managed to bump into a Disney representative at an awards show, which seemed to kickstart the discussions that made Sora in Smash a reality.

Sora's inclusion was finalized later than the rest of Ultimate's DLC roster. Sakurai said Fighters Pass 2 originally only had five fighters: Min Min, Steve, Sephiroth, Pyra/Mythra, and Kazuya. Then, after long discussions between Nintendo, Square Enix, and Disney, the Fighters Pass grew to six fighters.

Originally FP2 was planned to only have 5 fighters in the Pass — just like FP1. All the fighters had been decided, but it looked like Sora would be able to join after all. So even though it was quite challenging, it was decided to increase the number of fighters in FP2! pic.twitter.com/hS73pc8Xdc

— PushSusIn (@PushDustIn) October 20, 2021

This is a full-circle moment for Sora and Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts Director Tetsuya Nomura said Square Enix and Disney originally started talking about the Kingdom Hearts franchise when Square Enix Producer Shinji Hashimoto ran into a Disney executive in an elevator. Now, two decades later, another chance meeting is what eventually led to Sora joining Ultimate's roster.

Sora was the most requested fighter in the Smash 4 ballot, and he finally joined Smash Ultimate as the game's final character. The internet went crazy after his announcement, and #ThankYouSakurai was trending to congratulate Sakurai and the whole Smash Ultimate team on reaching the end of development.

We don't know what Sakurai plans to work on next, but he did confirm to Famitsu that he plans to work on a few more games before he retires. For more, check out our supercut of the final Super Smash Bros. Ultimate roster.

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