Marvel's superhero films — even the smaller ones — are juggernauts. From "Captain America" to "Guardians of the Galaxy" to "Iron Man," Marvel has turned its comic book heroes into film stars.

That same success in film hasn't translated into the realm of video games.

While Marvel's competitor, DC, has seen tremendous success with its "Batman" games, Marvel's wildly popular stable of characters have largely missed the boat when it comes to video games. There is no Captain America game, no Avengers game, no Guardians of the Galaxy game.  

But that's about to change: Marvel is teaming up with celebrated Japanese game publisher Square Enix, as well as two of its best game development studios (Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics), to create a new game based on "The Avengers."

Outside of the brief teaser above, we've got no additional information on the collaboration. Here's what we know:

• Square Enix and Marvel are working on a game based on The Avengers.
• The working title is "The Avengers project."
• It's the first of several games planned in the partnership.

There's a lot we can infer from that information that Marvel and Square Enix aren't saying outright. First: The studios in charge of the Avengers game, Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal, are known for creating gorgeous third- and first-person action games.

The major claim to fame for Crystal Dynamics? The "Tomb Raider" franchise, which has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years with a duo of fantastic new games (2013's "Tomb Raider" and 2015's "Rise of the Tomb Raider"). 

And what of the other studio involved, Eidos Montreal? 

Though it's less well-known, Eidos Montreal is responsible for the similarly fantastic "Deux Ex" franchise. Both 2011's "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" and 2016's "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided" are gorgeous, thoughtful, well-designed games. 

All of which is to say one thing: Don't expect a small mobile game to come out of this partnership. 

Unless the collaboration fizzles out — a real possibility given Disney's past with video game development— you should expect a major, blockbuster-style "Avengers" game from this partnership. 

Alas, if you're a fan of the recent "Tomb Raider" and "Deus Ex" games, you should equally expect fewer of those. Given how popular Marvel's properties are, we'd bet Square Enix directs its studios to focus on this collaboration over its somewhat riskier in-house properties. Sorry, Lara Croft / Adam Jensen fans — it looks like Thor and Iron Man win this round.

There's no window for when this "Avengers project" is set to launch, but we'd guess it's planned for 2018 or 2019 when the next two Avengers films ("Infinity War" and an untitled sequel) are scheduled to debut.

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NOW WATCH: Disney just dropped another 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' trailer — and it's the best one yet

Alex Gibney, the prolific filmmaker behind the Scientology documentary "Going Clear," has set his eyes on ousted Fox News Chairman Roger Ailes.

Gibney is staying tight-lipped about the planned film.

"As a matter of course, I don't talk about what I'm working on," the director told the Hollywood Reporter, which broke news of the project.

According to the trade magazine, the Ailes documentary is in development and hasn't yet been placed with a network.

In July of last year, Ailes, 76, found himself embroiled in controversy after anchor Gretchen Carlson alleged that he sexually harassed her while working at the Fox News Channel. Many other women then came forward with similar allegations, including now-former FNC anchor Megyn Kelly. Ailes resigned from his position at the cable news channel later that same month. 

In August, news surfaced that he was advising Donald Trump on his presidential campaign in advance of the aired debates.

Gibney, who has directed nearly 40 projects over his career, made a bigger name for himself in 2015 with the HBO documentary "Going Clear," inspired by the book about Scientology's beliefs and alleged abuses of the same name by Lawrence Wright. The movie went on to win three Emmys. Last year, Gibney told Business Insider that he was thinking about a "Going Clear" sequel.

SEE ALSO: Are Gretchen Carlson's show ratings as 'disappointing' as Roger Ailes claims?

DON'T MISS: The 'Going Clear' director says he might make a follow-up to the revealing Scientology documentary

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NOW WATCH: Watch Mitch McConnell credit former Fox News Chief Roger Ailes for jump-starting his political career

"Full Frontal with Samantha Bee" sent its correspondents to Donald Trump's presidential inauguration in Washington, DC last week to graciously give his supporters an opportunity to express their excitement.

"My team was at the inauguration Friday to witness firsthand the peaceful transfer of Obama's achievements into the landfill and to allow some gloating from the other side," Bee said on Wednesday's episode.

A respite from Bee's usual bashing of all things Trump, the interviewees seemed to do the work for her. For example, one young man expressed his vision of national unity to mixed results.

"We are all on this ship together," he said. "And whether or not it's the Titanic, we're yet to see. Support the captain, I guess."

One correspondent faced a black Trump supporter and could only muster the question, "Why?"

One older woman showed how well she knows the new president, saying, "He doesn't want to toot his own horn. He's not arrogant, he's not egotistical."

Another helpful Trump supporter offered this advice to those Americans who are experiencing anxiety with Trump in office: "Take two ibuprofen and a hammer, and put your hand down, and smash that fingers, and just scream, 'Goddamn I hate Trump!'" one reveler suggested, by way of comforting words.

Watch the Trump supporters gloating below:

SEE ALSO: Seth Meyers rips apart Trump for doubling down on false election fraud claim: 'Why do you keep lying?'

DON'T MISS: Trevor Noah: Here's how you know Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway is lying

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NOW WATCH: Shia LaBeouf got arrested on his anti-Trump live-stream

When Vietnamese game developer Dong Nguyen launched "Flappy Bird" in 2013, he wasn't expecting it to be the explosive hit that it quickly turned into.

The simple mobile game — which took visual cues from Nintendo's "Super Mario" franchise — cost nothing, and employed an intuitive, addictive mechanic to its gameplay: tap the screen to make a bird bounce in between pipes of varying heights.

The combination of explosive success and being cast into the spotlight actually put off the game's creator — to the point that he pulled it from the iTunes App Store in an effort to regain a level of privacy. 

Since then, Nguyen has re-emerged as a mobile game developer. He released a game in 2014 named "Swing Copters" that took the mechanics of "Flappy Bird" and applied them to a vertical landscape. It was positively received, but nowhere near the level of explosive success that "Flappy Bird" reached.

But now, in 2017, Nguyen has another new mobile game: It's named "Ninja Spinki Challenges!!", and it's nothing like his previous games.

"Ninja Spinki Challenges!!" is made up of several mini-games, all with the goal of training an apprentice ninja in the art of...ninja-ing. It's very tongue-in-cheek. Here's the full description of the game, straight from the iTunes App Store listing:

"Ninja is not an easy business.

Ninja training is just super hard.
6 different games with lots of challenges.

.GEARS which created legendary casual game 'Flappy Bird' and OBOKAIDEM known for 'Green the Planet 2' are filing down the most difficult Ninja challenges to you!"

What that actually means in terms of gameplay is another question altogether. What do you actually do in those six mini-games? Shaun Musgrave at Touch Arcade played the game, and he describes it with more specific wording:

"None of the games are terribly complex, with most of them requiring you dodge incoming objects of various sorts, but they quickly become tough as nails. Not quite 'Flappy Bird' or 'Swing Copters' tough, mind you, but you're probably going to be swearing at your phone just the same."

If that sounds like something you'd be into, the game is out now and costs nothing. Snag it for your iPhone/iPad right here, and your Android device right here.

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NOW WATCH: 'We watched our kids cry on Christmas': Parents are furious after disaster with the holidays' hottest toy

When Taylor Sheridan was 11 years old, he caught a wicked case of pneumonia that left him bedridden for weeks and unable to enjoy the 200 acres he lived on in the small North Texas community of Bosque County, just an hour west of Waco.

Though he looks back on his childhood fondly, being sick and stuck with nothing to do but watch the three channels on his TV set was the foundation for what he does today.

"I watched a lot of old movies," Sheridan, 47, who has just been nominated for the best original screenplay Oscar for "Hell or High Water," recently told Business Insider. "Clint Eastwood movies, a lot of John Wayne films, a lot of movies that celebrated the region of where I lived. Soon after, we finally got cable, and the whole world opened up."

Sheridan's meteoric rise as one of the top screenwriters working in Hollywood — thanks to his acclaimed scripts in the last two years, "Sicario" and "Hell or High Water" — is unique.

After spending over 20 years as a struggling actor, he finally landed a steady role playing Deputy Chief David Hale for three seasons on "Sons of Anarchy." But when it came time to renegotiate his contract in 2010, Sheridan found himself at a crossroads.

"They had one idea about what I was worth, and I had a very different idea," he said.

The grind to make a living as an actor had delivered its death blow. Fed up with making the weekly salary rate for "Sons of Anarchy" — which after taxes and paying his agent wasn't enough for him to make a living, so he had to also teach evening acting classes to pay rent — and with a baby on the way, Sheridan saw the negotiations as a wake-up call.

"How can you tell your kid you can be anything you want to be if you're not trying to do the same?" he said. "I imagine myself being 40-something years old and I can't go to his baseball game because I got a Windex commercial or something."

So Sheridan quit "Sons of Anarchy" — and acting.

This is when Taylor Sheridan's career in show business could have ended.

Not wanting to raise his child in a big city like Los Angeles, he moved his family to Wyoming, where he interviewed for a ranch manager job.

"I was going to be the head wrangler at a ranch in Wyoming, and the reason I didn't take the job is because I couldn't have my family there — the family had to stay in town," Sheridan said. "I just wasn't willing to do that."

Instead, Sheridan took up screenwriting.

"I just sat down and thought, 'I don't know how to do this, but I've read 10,000 scripts in my life and most of them were not very good, so if I just don't do all the things that bothered me as an actor it will probably turn out OK,'" he said.

His first script was "Sicario," a thriller he wrote on spec that's set on the US-Mexico border and follows an idealistic FBI agent who is brought in to help take down the Mexican cartels, but instead finds she's the pawn in a plot of a CIA officer to take control of one of the cartels by having its leader assassinated.

"I didn't expect the movie to ever be made," Sheridan said. "Every writer has written a spec. It's the first thing you write, and it basically stands as a means of 'here's an example of how I tell stories.' It's almost like a business card.

"So 'Sicario' essentially was that. You dream it will be made. You hope. But realistically you can't care."

Sheridan threw the script in the drawer and wrote a script that would be easier to sell: "Hell or High Water," then titled "Comancheria."

Like "Sicario," it would explore Sheridan's fascination with the modern-day American frontier. But this time he wrote something closer to home. He used a crime caper to examine the impoverished West Texas towns he came across when visiting family in Orchard City a few years ago.

"I was driving by empty house after empty house — it was just abandoned. And this one place that I think had the best hamburgers in America was gone," he said. "The idea of all these places being gone, and then there was this terrible drought, it just became natural that I wanted to explore that."

He set the story around two brothers who decide to embark on an ingenious bank-robbing spree to save their family ranch, which is a victim of the mortgage crisis.

Though "Hell or High Water" sold first, ironically it was "Sicario" that got to theaters first, thanks in part to top talent like Emily Blunt and Benicio Del Toro.

But "Hell or High Water" could lead to Sheridan receiving Oscar gold.

Released last summer, among the dead weight of bloated sequels and failed blockbusters, the movie instantly built a rabid following and Oscar hype for Sheridan. Chris Pine and Ben Foster are incredible as the brothers, while Jeff Bridges gives one of his best performances in years — which has also nabbed him an Oscar nod — playing the Texas Ranger who is on their trail.

In both "Sicario" and "Hell or High Water," Sheridan displays a gift of telling original stories through genres in which we think we've seen it all. And though in "Sicario" the story is extremely clever, in some ways the visionary skills of director Denis Villeneuve ("Arrival") and cinematographer Roger Deakins are what you remember most when you walk out of the theater.

In "Hell or High Water," director David Mackenzie lets Sheridan shine — especially his dialogue, which is some of the best you'll hear in modern movies.

Sheridan's success seems even more remarkable when he admits that the finished scripts for both "Sicario" and "Hell or High Water" were first drafts. Asked how this is even possible, Sheridan goes back to his former career.

"What I did as an actor, I was the guest star, I was the 10th banana on the series. My job was to push exposition. I was the one that shoveled the implausible parts of the scripts. That was my job," he said. "So for me, it was very easy on the page to see if I tried something and it didn't work. For me, structurally it needs to be seamless. I'm not someone who puts the whole thing down and goes back to fix. I want it perfect as I go."

Sheridan has completed the script for the "Sicario" sequel, "Soldado," which will come out this year with Josh Brolin returning as the CIA agent and Del Toro as the assassin. And he's finishing up his directorial debut, "Wind River," the conclusion of his American frontier trilogy, which will also open in 2017.

Starring Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, and Jon Bernthal, it looks at a murder at a Native American reservation.

"There's a theme that exists in all three of these movies, which is failure of a father, and that theme is explored in its most acute sense in this one," he said. "I don't want to say resolved, but I was really fascinated by how someone moves on from a tragedy without ever getting closure."

Sheridan is aware of the importance of "Wind River." "Sicario" put him on the map, and "Hell or High Water" could earn him an Oscar, but it will be his work in the director's chair that will prove if he can go forward telling his stories through his own lens.

"I was lucky with Denis and David. They were very protective of the scripts," Sheridan said. "But with 'Wind River' I got to do exactly what I wanted to do. If that one doesn't work, there's no pointing the finger at anyone but me."

SEE ALSO: The best movies and TV shows coming to iTunes, Amazon, and more in December

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Verizon is "exploring" a merger with Charter, the second-largest cable TV giant, in a move that would make Verizon look a lot more like AT&T, its main rival.

Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam approached officials "close to Charter," according to The Wall Street Journal, and is working with bankers on a potential deal.

There are a few reasons why a Verizon-Charter deal would make sense (including helping 5G), but the most intriguing reason lies in how the major wireless players are thinking about the future of TV.

The TV transition

A Verizon-Charter deal would be in line with AT&T's thesis that pay TV is a path toward jumpstarting a flagging wireless market. AT&T bought DirecTV in 2015, and recently used the brand to launch DirecTV Now, its streaming TV service.

There's a hefty debate about whether "cord-cutting," or people ditching their expensive cable packages, is actually an immediate threat to pay TV. But whichever side you land on in that argument, it's clear that wireless carriers want people to start watching more TV on their phones, or other wireless devices. Verizon and AT&T's ideal future is one where you watch TV wherever you happen to be, and they reap the financial rewards of being able to make that possible for you.

One big obstacle to that vision of the future is that deals, especially for TV streaming rights, are scattered and messy. A combined Verizon-Charter would have much more power in negotiating with TV networks.

But that's not the only benefit to Verizon.

By owning Charter, Verizon also wouldn't have to worry about the speed of transition from traditional cable TV, to streaming TV delivered over cable internet, to streaming TV delivered over wireless (in a best-case 5G world and beyond). Charter would not only help Verizon push along 5G from a technical perspective, it would also put Verizon-Charter in a powerful position to craft the rights deals as they change during that tech evolution.

This is a point that AT&T, and particularly CEO Randall Stephenson, has stressed recently. Stephenson didn't buy DirecTV because he was a huge fan of the satellite TV business. He bought it so AT&T would be a position to navigate the future of TV, especially with regards to bargaining with TV networks.

AT&T's streaming TV service, DirecTV Now, has been a technical mess since it launched in November, but it still snagged over 200,000 in its first month (a "really fast start," according to Stephenson). AT&T's traditional pay TV services, on the other hand, lost 27,000 subscribers in total in Q4.

That doesn't mean the traditional pay TV market is doomed. What it does mean is that there's a market of people willing to take a chance on a new pay TV product like DirecTV Now. They are open to trying out new services that put "TV everywhere" at the center. One of the advantages of DirecTV Now is that its data is "zero-rated" on AT&T's wireless network, meaning it doesn't count against your data cap. And people continue to watch more and more video on their phones, so why wouldn't Verizon want to bend that to its advantage?

If Verizon thinks that wireless TV is the eventual future, a Charter pickup could help the company make sure it's ready for that, and can allow it to ride out the years before that future arrives.

Previous reporting by Steve Kovach and Portia Crowe.

SEE ALSO: REPORT: Verizon and Charter are looking to combine

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NOW WATCH: 'Mexico does not believe in walls': Mexico's president rejects Trump's push for a border wall

Pretend all you like: You've almost certainly used your phone will sitting on a toilet. Let's just be honest, folks. 

And if we're being completely honest, let's take that logic a step further: You've probably spent some of that toilet-based phone time playing games. Maybe it was "Angry Birds" a few years back? Or "Flappy Bird"? Or perhaps "Super Mario Run"? 

Starting in March, Nintendo's new console will enable you to play a full-on "Mario Kart" game while sitting on the porcelain throne:

That's "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe," an updated version of the Wii U game. More importantly: Yes, that's a real Nintendo Switch advertisement prominently featuring a man playing a game while defecating.

Here's the actual ad:

The commercial comes from Nintendo's European arm (hence the bidet), which is headquartered in Germany. And this isn't some aside in a bigger commercial for the Switch, which launches on March 3 for $299 — this is the very first thing shown in a new commercial for the forthcoming console.

Talk about brutal honesty. 

The gimmick with the Switch, if you hadn't already guessed, is that it can be taken on-the-go (wherever that may be, including the bathroom). That doesn't mean it's a dedicated portable game console — it's a home console that can be turned into a handheld. 

Put more simply, the Nintendo Switch is a tablet game console that can be played on a television at home or as a portable game system. 

And while much of Nintendo's advertising for the console thus far has people using it, say, while sitting in airplanes, the latest ad from Nintendo's German arm is a bit more realistic with how people will play the Switch in portable form: while sitting on the toilet.

What a time to be alive.

SEE ALSO: I played Nintendo's new game console, the Switch — this is what it's like

DON'T MISS: Forget about that 'Super Mario' game on your iPhone — this is the new Mario game you're looking for

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NOW WATCH: We got to try Nintendo’s new Switch console — here’s what it was like

Ever wonder why we use the term "spam" when referring to unwanted junk e-mail? We may be able to look to Monty Python and their sketch, "Spam." 

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Elon Musk is a charming, ridiculously smart, incredibly successful businessman.

He's spent his career bucking the status quo, and he seemingly has too many jobs.

He's the CEO of Tesla Motors, the incredibly successful company behind the re-birth of all-electric vehicles. He's also the CEO of SpaceX, a company that exists to "revolutionize space technology, with the ultimate goal of enabling people to live on other planets." He also serves as the chairman of SolarCity — a company focused on making solar energy commonplace. 

When he's not busy transforming transportation, space travel, and energy use, Musk plays video games. Well, he does lots of other things, but video games are one of those things. And it turns out that Musk has excellent taste in games. Here are some of his favorites that we gathered from a Reddit AMA and his Twitter account:

SEE ALSO: After weeks of bugging him on Twitter, Elon Musk finally told me his 'dark secret'

"Overwatch"

"Overwatch" isn't just a good game — it's the best game that came out in 2016, folks. And Musk's been playing it because he has fantastic taste in games. He was quick to get hip — his first tweet about the game was in June 2016, soon after the game launched in May.

And, since Elon Musk is Elon Musk, he's playing the game on PC. Not only is the game prettiest there, but it's the platform where he has most control over performance. And if we know anything about Elon Musk, it's that he's got a thing for being in control. The guy's CEO of two major companies, at once! 

BONUS:His main is Soldier 76, which I'd personally call a bit on the boring side. He's a good character, no doubt, but as a main? Come on, Elon. You're more sophisticated than that.

"BioShock"

On paper, "BioShock" isn't anything special: a first-person shooter set in an underwater city that's fallen into disrepair. 

In reality, "BioShock" is a genre-pushing, narrative-driven shooter that questions the base level concepts of how video games work. If I said any more, I'd ruin the game. 

That said, it's not a huge surprise that Musk is a fan: The game is an Ayn Rand-inspired exploration of objectivism, capitalism, and power. It's also a tremendously stylish, innovative game.

The "Mass Effect" series

Moving to a subject that's near and dear to Musk's heart, the "Mass Effect" series focuses on space travel, interstellar diplomacy, and the future of the human race. He's called the second game in the series, "one of the best games ever."

And he's right: "Mass Effect 2" is seen by many as one of the best games ever made. Presumably he's getting pumped for the launch of "Mass Effect Andromeda" this coming March!

Neil Gaiman's best-selling 2001 novel is about to be your new TV obsession. "American Gods" has been adapted into a Starz series that will premiere in April 2017, and it looks amazing. This star-studded show will be based on the original book but dive deeper into some of the characters — including at least one that didn't exist in the novel. Here's everything we know so far. WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD

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On Thursday's "Daily Show," Trevor Noah took stock of the first week of Donald Trump's presidency to see what we can expect from here, and his assessment was pretty grim. It included a "Dark Knight" nod.

"The difference between candidate Trump and President Trump is that now we have to live in his crazy reality," Noah said.

According to Noah, Trump as president continues to find ways to build "his own reality," in part by selecting what he decides is real news or "fake news."

"If the news is critical of Donald Trump, it's fake news. Only praise is real news. Which is insane," Noah said.

The host pointed to Trump's recent interview with ABC, in which Trump used Fox News' positive coverage of his CIA speech to dismiss the widespread criticism he got for that speech, including from the intelligence community.

"And it's also crazy that all he does it watch Fox," Noah said. "He doesn't want to read, he doesn't want to have briefings. Trump watches Fox to get his news. You realize the reason that we need the news is because we don't have what the president has, which is all the information."

Noah then laid into Trump for repeatedly insisting that millions of people fraudulently voted in the 2016 presidential election, for which he has presented no credible evidence. Yet Trump says he will launch an investigation into voter fraud. The president referred to the number of dead people who are registered to vote.

"I see dead people," Noah joked. "You do understand because Donald Trump truly believes he should have won the popular vote, the federal government will now spend a ton of money and time investigating nonexistent voter fraud. 

"It's going to end up as an excuse to restrict more American citizens from voting. That's all that's going to happen," Noah continued.

Noah thought that for all of his ominous comments in the ABC interview, Trump needed different makeup, so he gave the president the same look as Heath Jedger's Joker.

Watch the video below:

SEE ALSO: The 30 best movie endings of all time, ranked

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It looks like Ben Affleck has finally hit a major speed bump as a director.

After three critically acclaimed feature directing efforts — "Gone Baby Gone," "The Town," and "Argo" (the last of which earned him a best picture Oscar) — his latest, "Live by Night," has turned out to be a critical and box-office failure. The movie is looking at a $75 million loss.

According to Variety, the gangster movie set in the Prohibition-era underworld that Affleck produced, wrote, directed, and stars in was a passion project for him, but has turned into a big sore spot for Warner Bros.

With a budget of $65 million (and likely another $10 million or so for advertising), it looks like the only way the studio can salvage the release is through a big spike in home-video and streaming sales later this year. But with only a 32% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and $16.5 million to date at the worldwide box office, there isn't much that can save this one.   

Thing don't get any easier for Affleck behind the camera. His next directing effort is supposed to be his standalone Batman movie, "The Batman," which he's currently writing.

Warner Bros. had no comment when contacted by Business Insider.

SEE ALSO: Inside Jerry Seinfeld's $100 million decision to jump to Netflix

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NOW WATCH: Shia LaBeouf got into a shouting match with a white nationalist on his anti-Trump live stream

In 2005, Stephen Gaghan was one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood and was coming into his own as a director with the release of his second feature, “Syriana,” which earned Gaghan a best original screenplay Oscar nomination and a best supporting actor win for George Clooney.

But then Gaghan suddenly went silent. After riding to the top of the industry with his Oscar-winning screenplay for Steven Soderbergh’s “Traffic” in 2000, and getting Soderbergh and Clooney to back “Syriana,” it looked like his rise was fizzling as quickly as it came.

It didn’t help that while promoting “Syriana,” Gaghan told the Financial Times that Soderbergh and Clooney stepped in and took over the edit from him.

“I wanted two hours, 24 minutes,” he said of the running time. “But Steven insisted on two hours. I think he was dead wrong and he ruined my movie."

But Gaghan recently told Business Insider that his demise has been greatly exaggerated, and that the lack of work we've seen from him in a decade has come down to bad luck.

“I was on the one-half yard line three different times with three different movies and it would fall apart. It got really, really frustrating,” Gaghan said.

Looking back, Gaghan sees his failure in the business side of filmmaking. Because he wasn’t just writing, directing, but also producing a handful of projects at once, he found himself unprepared to wage the battles that are needed to figure out the logistics and financing to get a movie off the ground.

“I don’t think I’m very good at that,” Gaghan said. “In hindsight, I just have to have a strong producer.”

In January 2015, Gaghan finally ended his dry spell by putting his passion projects aside and taking a for-hire job. “Gold” (which opens in theaters on Friday) was a project that had been in development since 2011 and had gone through the hands of directors like Michael Mann and Spike Lee before landing with Gaghan. Written by Patrick Massett and John Zinman, the story is a modern-day “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” It's loosely based on the 1993 Bre-X mining scandal, in which the mining company reported it was sitting on a huge gold find in the jungles of Indonesia. That led the company’s stock price to sore, but it was all discovered to be a massive fraud.

Matthew McConaughey added close to 50 pounds and gave himself a receding hairline to play the role of Kenny Wells, the prospector who travels to the jungle with a geologist (Edgar Ramírez) to find their fortune in gold.

“It was like a fever breaking and I just felt so happy all of a sudden that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing,” Gaghan said of directing “Gold.”

However, the joy would be short-lived, as the toils of shooting in Thailand and Indonesia almost ruined Gaghan’s comeback.

Comparing his shoot to watching “Hearts of Darkness” — the behind-the-scenes documentary on the making of “Apocalypse Now,” which was plagued with horrific storms, among other things — Gaghan said he insisted on filming "Gold" during monsoon season, but completely underestimated its power.

“I wanted real rain, I thought it was important to the story, but it came late,” Gaghan said. “When we got to the jungle, the locals were saying, ‘Monsoon very late.’ I’m looking up to the sky and it’s a blue sky.”

Not expecting a lot of rain, Gagahn had rain towers brought in for the first day of shooting. That would be the last day his set would be dry.

“The second day of shooting it started to rain and it was this weird event where two rivers connected and our river rose 35 feet in 12 hours,” he said. “It was astonishing. The third day we had to evacuate the set, our base camp was gone, the rain towers were upside down washing down the river.”

Gaghan got into a canoe to survey the damage and found that the set was completely underwater. “The water receded and not much was left and I was just sitting on a folding chair watching the water buffalo and wondering what are we going to do now.”

It seemed like the movie gods had struck again and would keep Gaghan from making a movie, but he remarkably rebounded and got enough footage in the jungle to continue on and complete filming.

With a transformed McConaughey and the pedigree of Gaghan, the film’s distributor the Weinstein Company thought it had an awards contender. But “Gold” didn’t gain traction and was shut out of the Oscars. The movie is now relegated to a release in the Hollywood “dump month” that is January. 

Gaghan, however, is only seeing the bright side of things these days.

“I’m super proud of the movie and obviously the thing you hope is what you make stands the test of time,” he said.

But where does he go from here? Has he completely burned his bridges with Soderbergh, or is there a chance the two could reconnect once more?

“I talked to him three days ago,” said Gaghan, who added that he showed Soderbergh an early cut of “Gold.”

Gaghan said he has patched things up with Soderbergh and Clooney, and now he believes “Syriana” “benefited from their insight.”

“I literally owe every good thing that happened in my career to Steven Soderberg,” he said. “And that's not just the good fortune that happened in getting to develop the script of ‘Traffic’ with him and being on set when he was making that and have him produce and back me to make ‘Syriana,’ but he’s just super generous. And ‘Gold’ was a direct beneficiary.”

It doesn’t look like we’ll have to wait another 10 years to see a Gaghan movie. It’s been announced that he will be writing and directing the bioterrorism sci-fi movie “The Division,” starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jessica Chastain. And he’s confident some of the projects he was working on before “Gold” aren’t dead.

“I think one or two of those projects will still get made,” he said.

SEE ALSO: Inside Jerry Seinfeld's $100 million decision to jump to Netflix

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NOW WATCH: Mark Hamill is reading Trump’s tweets in his iconic Joker voice — and it’s hilarious

Steve Burns hosted the children's show "Blue's Clue's" for 6 years, wearing a striped green shirt and solving puzzles with the help of his blue dog and viewers like you. Now, he's a musician and is about to release an album with one of the members of The Flaming Lips called "Foreverywhere." We chatted with Burns to find out what it was like being the victim of a death hoax, why he quit the show, and what he has been up to lately.

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Nintendo's upcoming video game console, the Switch, is versatile. It's a home console; it's a portable console; it can act as a portable display for you and a friend to play multiplayer games.

It slices! It dices! 

Okay, it doesn't do those last two things. But it does do the other stuff. And doing all that stuff means having a lot of ways to control games.

In the image above, we see a pretty standard setup: a wireless gamepad, which looks relatively traditional, controlling a console connected to a television. If the gamepad looks a little "off," that's because it is. It's basically a square with grips.

Here's a comparison between Nintendo's Switch gamepad and those of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4:

The difference is pretty stark, despite their similar button/thumbstick layouts. And that's due to the modular nature of Nintendo's Switch console — the grey areas with buttons on the left and right sides of the Switch gamepad are known as "Joy-Con, "and they're removable.

Like so:

You can use one of each as a pair of motion controllers, or you can hold one in each hand and use it as a sort of two-piece gamepad. 

Or, alternatively, you can turn one sideways and use it as a sort of miniature gamepad. Like this:

But let's be clear: none of these setups are ideal.

Even when the two Joy-Con are saddled into the Grip, thus forming the traditional-ish gamepad setup, it's not a great gamepad. It feels like a massive square with grips attached, because it is. Nintendo has a far better solution in its $70 "Pro" controller.

This should look much more familiar to anyone who has played a game console in the last decade:

Indeed, the Pro Controller is — in my personal experience — the best way to play games on the Switch. It's not a perfect gamepad, but it's far more comfortable and usable than any other controller setup on the console. It costs a whopping $70 (a $10 jump over how much Microsoft and Sony controllers cost), but it's a worthy investment if you plan on playing a lot of Switch games at home.

When the Switch launches on March 3, so does the Pro Controller. And, as of this week, the Pro Controller is finally up for pre-order. 

And you're going to want that Pro Controller. When the console launches in March, the biggest game is a no-brainer for the Pro Controller: "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild." 

Better yet, there's a combo pack that comes with the new "Zelda" game and a Pro Controller. It's almost like Nintendo realizes that the best way to play the new "Zelda" is with its Pro Controller! Notably, it looks like GameStop is the only retailer offering pre-orders of the gamepad.

Thinking you can hold off on buying one until the console launches in March? Think again: Nintendo has a long history of hardware shortages, especially when it comes to peripherals. Even the massively popular NES Classic Edition console was in short supply, and that's just a little plastic box that plays games from 30 years ago.

Here's hoping we're wrong about that, and there are plenty of Pro Controllers available for the March 3 launch.

SEE ALSO: This is why Nintendo believes its next console won't fail like its last one did

DON'T MISS: I played Nintendo's new game console, the Switch — this is what it's like

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NOW WATCH: We got to try Nintendo’s new Switch console — here’s what it was like

President Donald Trump slammed Madonna for controversial comments she made during the Women's March in Washington, D.C., over the weekend.

"Honestly, she's disgusting," Trump said of Madonna on Fox News' "Hannity" on Thursday. "I think she hurt herself very badly. I think she hurt that whole cause."

He then continued, "I thought what she said was disgraceful to our country."

During Madonna's address at the National Mall on Saturday, she said, "Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House... but I choose love."

She also dropped several F-bombs, leading CNN to cut off her comments during its live broadcast.

"It took this horrific moment of darkness to wake us the f--- up," Madonna said to the crowd and on jumbotrons at the Women's March.

"To the detractors that insist that this march will never add up to anything: F--- you," she added.

Madonna, however, also urged for a "revolution of love" (a common refrain of late for the pop star). She led marchers in a chant of "We choose love," before performing her hit "Express Yourself."

Amid outrage by conservatives, she then defended her statements on Sunday as "taken wildly out of context."

"I am not a violent person, I do not promote violence," she said.

A peer of Madonna, pop star Cyndi Lauper at least partially agreed with Trump about the speech's damage to the cause.

"I don't think it served our purpose," she said on Bravo's "Watch What Happens Live" earlier this week, "because anger is not better than clarity and humanity. That is what opens people's minds."

Watch Trump comment on Madonna in the "Hannity" interview below:

Watch Lauper's comments on Madonna from "WWHL" below:

SEE ALSO: Samantha Bee gave Trump supporters a chance to gloat

DON'T MISS: Seth Meyers rips apart Trump for doubling down on false election fraud claim: 'Why do you keep lying?'

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NOW WATCH: Shia LaBeouf got arrested on his anti-Trump live-stream

First lady Melania Trump is on the cover of Vanity Fair's Mexican edition, and many Mexicans are both baffled and furious, given the current strain between President Donald Trump and Mexico.

Melania Trump appears on the cover of the February issue miming eating a bowl of diamonds and jewelry while decked out in bling of her own. The accompanying article covers topics like "how she plans to become the new Jackie Kennedy."

Both the photo and the story are recycled from an earlier GQ spread, according to CNN. (The magazines share a parent company.)

Still, the cover decision shows how confounding the relationship between the media and the Trump family is.

In December, Donald Trump trashed Vanity Fair in a tweet, seemingly in response to an article that asserted "Trump Grill could be the worst restaurant in America."

"Has anyone looked at the really poor numbers of @VanityFair Magazine" Trump wrote. "Way down, big trouble, dead! Graydon Carter, no talent, will be out!"

Trump has for years sparred with Carter, the longtime editor of Vanity Fair. Carter was the one who first drew wide attention to Trump's "small" hands in a GQ article (and in Spy magazine).

But Trump's tirade actually boosted subscriptions to the magazine's US edition, to the tune of 13,000 new additions within 24 hours, according to Poynter.

On Thursday, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto canceled his meeting with Trump after Trump said that he shouldn't come if Mexico was "unwilling to pay" for a wall on its shared border with the US.

If you glance through the replies to Vanity Fair's tweet with the article, it's a torrent of animosity.

"Apologize to Mexico for this stupidity," one commenter wrote. Another described it as an "insult to our country," and still another said it showed a "lack of respect for Mexican society."

Additional reporting by Oliver Darcy.

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The two streaming giants, Netflix and Amazon, were both busy for a second straight year at the Sundance Film Festival ending this weekend, and both took some of the most talked-about titles at the fest.

Following its $10 million buy of current Oscar best picture nominee “Manchester by the Sea” last year, Amazon has come back to Park City with a bigger wallet. The company bought the comedy “The Big Sick” for $12 million, the biggest buy of this year's fest. Meanwhile, Netflix has taken some of the most coveted documentaries at the fest, like “Chasing Coral” and “Icarus.”

Though a few of the traditional distributors have also grabbed some big fish from the fest, filmmakers are clearly gravitating to Netflix and Amazon.

Here’s a breakdown of all the Sundance movies Netflix and Amazon bought that will be showing on their services later this year (plus a few of the standout buys from other distributors):

SEE ALSO: Inside Matthew McConaughey's new movie that became plagued with disaster

“Berlin Syndrome” — Netflix (“Low-to-mid seven figures” buy)

This thriller about an Australian photographer who finds herself unable to leave the apartment of her romantic encounter will be getting a North American theatrical release through Vertical Entertainment before it goes to streaming on Netflix.

Source

“The Big Sick” — Amazon ($12 million buy)

Produced by Judd Apatow and starring “Silicon Valley” cast member Kumail Nanjiani (who cowrote the script), this comedy about a couple dealing with their cultural differences is one of the biggest hits at this year’s festival. Amazon will handle a theatrical release of the film before streaming it later this year.

Source

“Casting JonBenet” — Netflix

Netflix nabbed the worldwide rights to the film before Sundance started. This unique look at the murder of JonBenet Ramsey will be available to stream in the spring.

Source

The SEC on Friday announced that it was charging two New York City men on running an $81 million Ponzi scheme that deceived investors into buying blocks of tickets to high-demand shows including Adele concerts and the smash Broadway hit “Hamilton.”

The two men, Joseph Meli and Matthew Harriton, allegedly raised about $81 million from at least 125 investors in 13 states.

The SEC's complaint in the civil fraud charge alleges that Mali and Harrison told investors that they had a deal with a “Hamtilon” producer for 35,000 tickets, though no such agreement ever existed. 

While Mali and Harriton purportedly told investors that the money would go to finance the buying and reselling of tickets to popular events, the SEC claims that funds went to personal expenses including jewelry, private school tuition, camp tuition, and gambling.

“As alleged in our complaint, Meli and Harriton raised millions from investors by promising big profits from reselling tickets to A-list events when in reality they were moving investor money in a circle and creating a mirage of profitability,” Paul G. Levenson, the director of the SEC’s Boston Regional Office, said in a press release.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York is also pursuing criminal charges against Meli.

According to Reuters, court papers quote Meli as having told an alleged fellow schemer in a phone call, "It would be impossible for anyone on planet earth unless you told them... to know what we did."

SEE ALSO: Ben Affleck's new gangster movie is a mega-flop that's set to lose $75 million for Warner Bros.

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NOW WATCH: A Harvard psychologist reveals the best way to fake it till you make it

Super Bowl LI is coming up and the advertisers are ready. Because of their popularity, many Super Bowl commercials are pre-released or have teasers. These are some of the best so far.

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