Chris Pratt on new film Mercy: I asked to be locked into an executioner's chair Being locked barefoot in an executioner's chair sounds uncomfortable, but that is what Chris Pratt requested for his latest film, Mercy. More familiar as a wisecracking action hero in blockbusters like Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World, this role is quite a departure for him. He plays homicide detective Chris Raven, who's fighting for his life after being accused of murdering his wife. Raven is an alcoholic who wakes in the chair after a drinking binge, with just 90 minutes to convince an AI judge he's innocent, or he'll be executed immediately. The film is set in real time, so we see Raven defend his case - while enduring a crashing hangover.

Mario is returning to the big screen. Following the massive success of, which made more than $1.3 billion worldwide in 2023, animation studio Illumination and Nintendo are releasing a sequel,, in April 2026. Nintendo dropped a teaser trailer during its Direct presentation on Friday. The teaser doesn't offer much about the movie, which takes its name from the 2007 platformer.Mario dozes in a field before title credits appear, that's about it. But the trailer still signifies that Nintendo will continue to churn out films aimed at turning Mario into a megafranchise .

Breaking news: the internet is in uproar over something impossibly trivial. Yesterday Universal launched its trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a first glimpse at the new big-screen rendering of Nintendo's beloved leak-fixer. For most of the trailer's two-and-a-bit minute run time, fans were happy enough: there was some cutesy CGI, familiar characters were present and correct, there was some gentle PG-rated attempts at humour. But then Mario opened his gob and out came Chris Pratt's voice. The response was immediate and furious.

In a fight that's over in seconds, Bowser asks who could dare challenge him. Enter Mario -- voiced by Chris Pratt with all the passion of a Chris Pratt character, sounding exactly like Chris Pratt and not at all like the chirpy, "woo hoo" voice of the games, where he is voiced by Charles Martinet.

Sign up for the daily Marketplace newsletter to make sense of the most important business and economic news. Algorithms play a huge role in the content people watch. Netflix, for example, has said that approximately 80% of subscribers trust the platform's recommendations. But as artificial intelligence technology advances, it may play an increasingly important role in what films and TV shows are made. Bloomberg columnist Trung Phan recently wrote about AI's potential in evaluating film and television projects' commercial viability.

The N64 expansion includes titles like "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time," "Paper Mario," "Starfox 64," all classics of the console. It will also include some niche titles, like "Winback," probably the first shooting game ever to use a cover system, and the rails shooter classic "Sin and Punishment." The expansion is a small step toward addressing long-standing fan complaints about Nintendo's lack of interest in supporting its archives, particularly since its Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS and 3DS libraries are vast and beloved. The Nintendo DS is the second best-selling video game console of all time.

During Thursday's latest Nintendo Direct event, acclaimed video game designer Miyamoto Shigeru announced that the company's upcoming feature length animation project -- in conjunction with American film studio, Illumination -- now has a firm North American theatrical release date of December 21st, 2022. "Here we go!" Chris Pratt as Mario Anya Taylor-Joy as Peach Charlie Day as Luigi Jack Black as Bowser Keegan-Michael Key as Toad Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong Fred Armisen as Cranky Kong Kevin Michael Richardson as Kamek Sebastian Maniscalco as Spike Cameos from Charles Martinet pic.twitter.com/Yio2pql1Jy While release dates for Europe, Japan, and other markets have yet to be revealed, Miyamoto did share the studio's key character casting decisions. Chris Pratt will voice Mario. "He's so cool," Miyamoto commented.

Mattel has succeeded in (almost) bringing dinosaurs back from extinction. The toy giant has revealed its $250 'Alpha Training Blue' robot velociraptor toy that users can play with, pet and train with a remote controller, just like Chris Pratt in the'Jurassic World' movies. It walks, squawks and snarls just like a real raptor and is packed with loads of tricks so that users never get bored. Mattel has revealed its $250 'Alpha Training Blue' robot velociraptor toy that users can play with, pet and train with a remote controller, just like Chris Pratt in the'Jurassic World' movies Mattel said Thursday its Alpha Training Blue robo-raptor is now available for pre-order on Amazon. The toy will ship in October.

Well, I'd already seen Assassin's Creed, so I figured I might as well see the other sci-fi movie released this Christmas, Passengers, starring the they're-so-hot-right-now duo of Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Reviews were tepid, and I wasn't expecting much, but the film did manage to surprise me in one significant way. The marketing for Passengers has been all over the place. The film is either pitched as an action blockbuster, as Jim (Pratt) and Aurora (Lawrence) try to save a malfunctioning ship Sunshine-style, or a romance, where Pratt and Lawrence find love as the only two people accidentally awakened with 90 years left to go on an interstellar cruise. I imagined there would be some twist embedded in the film, but what I found when I watched it wasn't what I was expecting at all.

The best science fiction blends reality and imagination, so a viewer walks away contemplating the limits of human possibility. The worst take leaps of faith that toss a viewer into an oblivion of head scratching. Passengers, a space thriller directed by the Imitation Game's Morten Tyldum and starring Hollywood mainstays Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence, begins in the first category before rocketing into the second. In the film, Avalon -- a commercial starship -- ferries more than 5,000 colonists on a voyage from Earth to a new home world called Homestead II. To survive the 120-year trip, the travelers are placed into induced hibernation, but an accident rouses Chris Pratt's character -- mechanical engineer Jim Preston -- 90 years early.