Barely Related: Mythbusters break up, Spider-Woman cover
Home again, home again – and then off to PAX Prime next week.
Welcome to Barely Related, a conversational Friday column that presents the non-gaming news stories that we, the Joystiq staff, have been talking about over the past week. And no, we're not stopping our focus on industry and gaming news. Think of this as your casual weekly recap of interesting (and mostly geeky) news, presented just in time to fill your brain with things to discuss at all of those weekend shindigs.
Grab a fresh drink, lean back in your armchair, and get ready to talk nerdy with us.
Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci end their run on Mythbusters with a whimper
The Mythbusters B Team is exiting the show after 10 years of explosions, welding, explosions, robots and explosions. At the end of Thursday night's season finale of Mythbusters, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman announced that the show would be returning to its roots with just those two testing myths on-screen.
"It's not only the end of this episode; it's not only the end of this season. It is also the end of an era," Savage said. "This was the very last episode of Mythbusters to feature the incredible trio of Kari Byron, Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara."
Farewell, friends! May you find other outlets for science (and explosions) in your lives. Discovery Channel has a slideshow of the crew's time on Mythbusters right here.
It's a butt, it's a crack, it's the variant cover of Spider-Woman #1
A variant cover of Marvel's Spider-Woman #1 drawn by erotica artist Milo Manara shows Spider-Woman presenting herself to the city while wearing what has to be body paint. Fabrics (and physics) don't work like this in real life.
The new Doctor addresses Clara's exit rumors
Though he doesn't say much. It's rumored that Jenna Coleman, the actress who plays the Doctor's current companion, Clara, will leave the show after Christmas. A host on BBC One's The One Show asked Peter Capaldi, the new Doctor of series eight, directly about that.
"I'm not looking for a new assistant," Capaldi said. "I've read that she may be leaving at Christmas, but I don't even know if she'll get to Christmas. You've got to just watch and wait to see what happens. What I can say is that she's absolutely fabulous."
However long Coleman's run on Doctor Who will be, it certainly seems like we're in for a change of tone in the relationship between the Doctor and Clara this season.
The Jungle Book live-action adaptation snares a wild Cumberbatch
Benedict Cumberbatch – Sherlock Holmes in BBC's Sherlock, Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness, penguin lover – will voice the tiger Shere Khan in Warner Bros' live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book. This is the film directed by Gollum actor Andy Serkis, not the Disney version of The Jungle Book also in the works. Rawr.
Also, Benedict Cumberbatch wears boxer briefs. Now we know.
BREAKING NEWS: Paul Rudd wears a hoodie
The first official image from Marvel's Ant-Man movie is a low-key look at Paul Rudd, who plays the protagonist Scott Lang, wearing a few layers of jackets in front of the Golden Gate Bridge. He looks a bit beaten up. He also looks nothing like an ant.
Help the Smithsonian transcribe historic documents
The Smithsonian is enlisting the help of the worldwide web to transcribe some of its digitized, hand-written documents, including "Civil War journals, personal letters from famous artists, 100-year-old botany specimen labels and examples of early American currency." The Transcription Center site is open for business (and for curious history fans).
American Horror Story: Freak Show admits one and all in October
American Horror Story: Freak Show premieres on October 8 on FX, and it stars a a slightly floppy, insect-y hand. At least, that's what the first official teaser trailer shows.
A Sandman movie might actually be happening
Sandman author Neil Gaiman is working with actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt and screenwriter Jack Thorne on a film adaptation of his dark fantasy, supernatural comic, and it looks like things may actually take off this time. Sandman has been a hot property for Hollywood pre-production hell (heh, hot) since the 1990s, but Gaiman, Gordon-Levitt and Thorne are working things out as we speak. Gaiman discussed the movie at a recent festival, as provided by CBR:
"Joseph Gordon-Levitt, of all people, is an enormous Sandman fan. He and David Goyer talked about it, they've come up, I believe, with a treatment of what they want the story of the first movie to be. They are talking to an incredible writer, who I coincidentally already knew, because he did the movie script for The Ocean at the End of the Lane, so I've met him and loved his treatment of my work. And Wednesday afternoon I will be spending with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and talking Sandman. That's pretty much everything I know. Now you know as much as I know."
Here's the trailer for the Quentin Tarantino film you may have already read
The first trailer for Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight is now online, seemingly bootlegged but allowed to live online since Wednesday. Tarantino may simply be done policing leaks of this one, since the script found its way online earlier this year.
[Images: Marvel, The Smithsonian]
