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SYFY WIRE colin farrell

WIRE Buzz: Matt Reeves teases Colin Farrell for The Penguin; new Xbox Series X details; more

By Josh Grossberg
Colin Farrell

Colin Farrell is apparently getting fitted for his tux.

Forget elephants and Fantastic Beasts. The Dumbo and Fantastastic Beasts star looks to be hopping into the role of Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin, in Matt Reeves' highly anticipated The Batman opposite Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/The Caped Crusader.

As production got underway today on the blockbuster in London, the director teased the news on Monday, tweeting out a GIF of Farrell from the 2008 movie In Bruges with the caption, "Wait - is that you, #Oz?" alongside an emoji of a bat. Oz would seem to imply Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot, aka The Penguin.

Reeves has taken a similar approach to other casting announcements in the past, posting GIFs for each of his stars – including most recently Green Lantern actor Peter Sarsgaard who's purportedly playing an unspecified role that many fans believe to be Harvey Dent/Two Face.

A rep for Warner Bros. could not be reached for comment.

If true, Farrell's Penguin would be the latest addition to the Rogues Gallery of villains Reeves has been assembling that already includes Zoë Kravitz as Catwoman, Paul Dano as The Riddler, and John Turturro as Carmine Falcone. Also on board the star-studded cast are Jeffrey Wright as Commissioner Gordon and Andy Serkis as Alfred Pennyworth.

Danny DeVito previously played a gnarly version of Cobblepot in 1992's classic Batman Returns; Burgess Meredith, camped it up as the Penguin in the 1960s Batman television series; and most recently we saw Robin Lord Taylor's Gotham take.


New details of Microsoft's latest Xbox Series X dropped today during AMD's CES 2020 keynote presentation today.

Aside from its blocky design previously shown off in the trailer above, the new Xbox is similar in style to a small gaming PC and will be one of several consoles that will make up the family – hence the name "Series X," according to Tech Radar.

And as The Verge reports, its specs include a custom-designed CPU based on the chipnaker's Zen 2 and Radeon RDNA architecture. And to help boost load times, Microsoft is also using an NVMe SSD.

The event was not without controversy however as the chipmaker commit a pretty embarrassing gaffe when it included a fake 3D model of the back of the console showing off various ports. As folks in attendance and online quickly pointed out, Microsoft has yet to reveal what the rear officially looks like and what ports it features. The goof forced AMD to later issue an apology a few hours later and retract the information it relayed about the rear-mounted ports, revealing they had sourced the image from renders available on the TurboSquid website.

Whoops!

All told, the Xbox Series X is seeking to make good on Microsoft's promise to deliver the next generation console. And gamers will certainly benefit as the Series X will also have 8K gaming resolution, 120 fps frame rates, ray tracing, and variable refresh rate support.

The Xbox Series will hit stores around the 2020 holiday season.


In other CES convention news, Sony celebrated the 20th anniversary of the PlayStation 2 while also sharing news of another major milestone.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Sony Interactive Entertainment honcho Jim Ryan announced from the stage that its current PlayStation 4 console has sold a whopping 106 million PS4 units and more than 1.1 billion games worldwide since its launch way back in 2013.

Sony PlayStation 4 Pro via official YouTube 2019

But that's not all. The company said its VR headset, the PlayStation VR, has sold over 5 million units since its launch in October 2016 and its online service, PlayStation Network (PSN) has racked up 103 million monthly active users, a huge boost since the 94 million users it tallied last May.

As for what the future holds, Ryan showed off the logo for the forthcoming PlayStation 5 console expected by the end of the year. He also revealed the next generation will improve on its predecessor with 3D audio sound, ultra high-speed processing power, adaptive triggers in its controllers for even cooler game control, and ray-tracing technology that will render out an eye-popping viewing experience among other updates.