PV Guide • 2nd December 2025

Ania Magliano on Taskmaster: 'It puts you back into this childlike mindset'

Series 20 of Taskmaster was another high point in a show full of high points, with a charming cast of contestants spread across the doesn’t-give-a-shit to highly-motivated spectrum  – crucial to any great series of the show. Some (Sanjeev Bhaskar) very openly didn’t care how they performed, while others tried very hard to win it all, resulting in the closest final standings yet. You can watch all of series 20 on the Taskmaster YouTube channel.

Some of the series’ excellent contestants are shari...

PV Guide • 20th October 2025

Fortnite Talk Show host thelukeman on creating an interview show that isn't about celebrities

“People don’t get a lot of chances to talk about themselves because it’s considered rude or improper. I think of Fortnite Talk Show as a place where it’s like 'No, I want you to tell me what your life is like.'”

One of my favorite recurring series right now is Twitch streamer thelukeman’s Fortnite Talk Show. He queues up alone in a random Fortnite game and, after innocently asking if anyone has a mic, blares talk show intro music and attempts to get one of his teammates to answer questions abou...

PV Guide • 10th October 2025

Tron: Ares writer Jesse Wigutow talks sci-fi, Daredevil, and the scriptwriting process

The screenwriter shares some of his influences for Tron: Ares and what to expect from the next season of Daredevil

Veteran screenwriter Jesse Wigutow has worked with almost every major studio in Hollywood, but until recently, most of it has been uncredited. That all changed after Wigutow served as a consulting producer on season one of Daredevil: Born Again, writing two episodes, and then penned the screenplay for the upcoming Tron: Ares, which is now in theaters.

I spoke with Wigutow about hi...

PV Guide • 30th September 2025

Marko Zaror on why he wanted to keep the action in his new sci-fi movie grounded

The past few years have been good to Chilean martial arts star Marko Zaror. After a memorable supporting part in John Wick: Chapter 4 and an even more memorable dual role in the excellent Shaw Brothers-style throwback The Fist of the Condor, Zaror has had supporting roles in The Killer’s Game and Fight or Flight, and stole the screen as the Anton Chigurh-meets-the-Terminator villain in Diablo.

His latest movie, Affinity, is his third 2025 release. Set in Thailand, it follows Bruno (Zaror), a de...

PV Guide • 10th September 2025

Izzy Roland on her new movie D(e)ad: 'It felt like we had been working on this family project for my whole life'

Comedian, screenwriter, and Dropout star Izzy Roland’s new movie D(e)ad is a true family affair. Roland wrote the script, produced the movie, and stars as lead Tillie, Roland’s mom Claudia Lonow directed and stars as Tillie’s mother, and Roland’s step-father, grandparents, and husband Brennan Lee Mulligan all play roles in the movie. There are other familiar faces for Dropout fans, too, including Vic Michaelis as Tillie’s sister, and Zac Oyama as a particularly eager doctor. The movie plays in l...

PV Guide • 2nd September 2025

Alice Wu reflects on love and Saving Face with new Criterion release

Alice Wu’s heartfelt 2004 debut Saving Face was added to the Criterion Collection this August, with a new director-approved blu-ray filled with special features. The rom-com follows a young Chinese American surgeon (Michelle Krusiec) navigating falling for her new dancer girlfriend (Lynn Chen), the unexpected pregnancy of her unmarried mother (Joan Chen), and the cultural stigmas around each.

Wu originally wrote the script while working at Microsoft and taking a screenwriting class at the Unive...

PV Guide • 16th July 2025

Dirty Laundry co-hosts Lily Du and Grant O’Brien talk the Dropout show’s new look and their dream guests

The season five premiere of Dirty Laundry aired Tuesday night with a new, art deco-inspired look for Dropout’s drinking game show and a cavalcade of new, ridiculous stories to gab over. I talked to co-hosts Lily Du and Grant O'Brien about the changes, the show’s evolution from season one, Lily’s first season as a Dirty Laundry executive producer, and who their dream guests would be.I wanted to start, Lily, by congratulating you on getting the hero edit of the Game Changer episode “The Drinking G...

PV Guide • 30th June 2025

Jason Mantzoukas Taskmaster interview, part 2: “Taskmaster Series 19 will undo Brexit and undo the 2024 US election”

Good morning, PV Guide readers! This is part two of my interview with Jason Mantzoukas, the hilarious actor, podcaster, and comedian who recently starred on Taskmaster Series 19. You can read part one here, and you can watch the season on the Taskmaster YouTube channel.Let’s jump right into it.I have to ask about the haunted painting you put up as a prize task, especially because you have two like it behind you. You ended up winning that episode. Do you still have the painting?Yes, of course I h...

PV Guide • 23rd June 2025

"I feel like my best mode is chaos." Jason Mantzoukas on his heel turn in Taskmaster, one of his favorite shows

While each Taskmaster series features large personalities, few contestants have been able to make an impression on the same level as Jason Mantzoukas. The first American-based contestant on the British panel show, Mantzoukas burst onto the series with his signature comedic style, sowing a path of chaos and destruction wherever he went.Mantzoukas is also one of the rare contestants to ask to be on the show, rather than vice versa. A long-time fan of the series, Mantzoukas took his shot and reache...

PV Guide • 18th June 2025

Rematch creative director on making a sports game for everyone

I’ve loved sports games my whole life, but lately, they’ve been largely restricted to two categories: AAA simulators like NBA 2K or Madden, or glorified-Excel-sheet management simulators like Football Manager (note: I say this with love and an embarrassing number of hours played). There are exceptions, to be sure, but the market is dominated by games trying to replicate the real thing as closely as possible, which inevitably results in shortcomings when you see the seams of the simulation. (Find...

PV Guide • 5th June 2025

Ally Beardsley and Siobhan Thompson talk life on an airship in Dimension 20’s Cloudward, Ho!

After years of watching Dropout’s comedy shows, I was drawn into the world of Dimension 20 with their action-movie focused campaign Never Stop Blowing Up. In that season, a group of video store employees find themselves magically pulled into the over-the-top world of a 1980s action movie, a premise that turned out to be an excellent match for the players’ penchant for outrageous hijinks.After a couple of sequel campaigns to previous adventures and a wrestling-focused one that looks neat but is n...

PV Guide • 21st May 2025

Lost Bullet director Guillaume Pierret on shooting real fireworks at a real helicopter in the action trilogy’s final entry

The Lost Bullet trilogy, from director Guillaume Pierret and streaming on Netflix, knows exactly what you want from action movies featuring cars. While the movies also deliver tense, fast-paced crime narratives and brutal melees, the trilogy excels on the road. Each movie features some of the most intricately choreographed vehicular action you’ll ever see, with high-speed chases, inventive new gadgets, and a tangible authenticity and sense of danger that many green-screen heavy Hollywood blockbu...

Polygon • 6th May 2025

John Wick’s director breaks down how he got to design action on Lazarus, ‘the funnest job’ he’s ever done

Chad Stahelski: I had talked to Joseph Cho, who’s a producer on it. I’m very fascinated by animation. We’re trying to do one of our own right now as well. So we had been going back and forth with Joseph, who became a good friend, and knew my love of anime, and he just happened to be a producer on Lazarus. Every time somebody interviews me for John Wick, I always bring up anime and what I love about it, from Ghost in the Shell to one of my biggest influences, Cowboy Bebop, and obviously Samurai C...

Polygon • 28th April 2025

‘It was real cat wrangling’: Alex Horne and Greg Davies on Taskmaster’s ‘chaotic’ series 19

Horne: That’s a good question. There’s a spreadsheet which me and the director and the producer constantly play with as we’re recording ’em, thinking, OK, that could be an opener for the series, that could be a closer for the series. And then you sort of slot them in thinking, Well, we’ve got one in the garden, so we should have one inside next. So it is boring location stuff and then thinking, Well, this is really high-energy, good to have a low-energy one next, or This one’s artistic, it shoul...

Polygon • 11th April 2025

Saloum director’s new thriller is so relevant in 2025, he’s not sure how to feel

After taking the world of genre cinema by storm with 2022’s cult hit Saloum, director Jean Luc Herbulot is back with another fascinating genre experiment filled with surprising twists and turns and a radical political message. His new movie Zero, out in theaters and available on VOD this week, is one of 2025’s most explosive new movies — and not just because its premise involves quite a few bomb vests. Part Crank, part Phone Booth, part odd-couple buddy comedy, part unusually relevant action mov...

Polygon • 6th April 2025

If John Wick director Chad Stahelski ‘could get away with it,’ he’d fully pivot to anime

The official announcement of a John Wick animated prequel movie should come as no surprise. Franchise auteur Chad Stahelski (who is producing the prequel) is a longtime anime fan who has made no secret of the medium’s influence on his work (“I hope people can watch at least John Wick: Chapter 4 and go, Oh, he’s got a heavy, heavy anime influence,” he told Polygon), and has been dropping hints about the project for months. He’s also recently flexed his action design chops in that arena, working o...

Polygon • 9th March 2025

Milla Jovovich and Paul W.S. Anderson say the hard part of adapting George R.R. Martin is not evoking Game of Thrones

That was the test Paul W.S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich faced with In the Lost Lands, their new dark fantasy Western movie, based on the George R.R. Martin short story of the same name. The film — the first movie adaptation of Martin’s work since 1987 — is a largely faithful adaptation, albeit with some radically new elements. In particular, there’s a new central antagonist: a religious cult the protagonists (Jovovich and Dave Bautista) have to contend with.Polygon spoke with Anderson and Jovovi...

Polygon • 23rd February 2025

Daisy Ridley on ‘becoming Spider-Woman’ in her new action-thriller Cleaner

“I feel like I’m drawn to very different things,” Ridley told Polygon in a video interview. While it’s true that her recent projects are spread across a wide group of genres, though, many of them have featured physicality as an important part of her performance. Ridley trained with Olympic swimmer Siobhan-Marie O’Connor in preparation for the historical drama Young Woman and the Sea, while Sometimes I Think About Dying required her to stay deathly still for a significant portion of the movie. (“...

Polygon • 30th January 2025

Viral comedian Vinny Thomas broke the one Star Wars improv rule while filming Ahsoka

Vinny Thomas: I grew up in Denver, Colorado. I didn’t want to be a performer necessarily for most of my childhood. I wanted to be the curator of birds at the Bronx Zoo. That was my main goal. I just wanted to work at a zoo and I wanted to take care of birds. But then I joined a little improv group that they were having auditions for at my school, called Spontaneous Combustion, and I loved it. I really loved it. We would perform at the two improv theaters in Denver at the time, and I just loved i...

Polygon • 11th January 2025

It took ‘months’ to convince Donnie Yen to direct and star in The Prosecutor

A new Donnie Yen movie is always a must-see event for action fans. After wowing audiences in 2023 with his role as Caine in John Wick: Chapter 4 and his wuxia epic Sakra (which he directed and starred in), as well as his memorable semi-recent turns in Rogue One and the Ip Man series, the Hong Kong legend is back with The Prosecutor, once again as both star and director.Yen will be the first to tell you that this movie is a departure from his usual subject matter — The Prosecutor is primarily a c...

Polygon • 10th January 2025

Den of Thieves 2 director on making action movie history with an electric-car chase

Of the movie’s many standout sequences, the most impressive is an audacious car chase and shootout that takes place on a narrow, winding mountain road. The sequence is positively electrifying, and not just because Gudegast and his team broke new ground by using modified electric-powered vehicles. The sense of danger is palpable, and the custom modifications they were able to make to the cars allowed the cameras to get right in on every piece of the action.Christian Gudegast: I’m a car nut, and I...

Polygon • 24th December 2024

Werewolves director on his practical monsters: ‘If the werewolves don’t work, the movie doesn’t work’

Steven C. Miller: Look, my immediate priority was practical, right? How many practical werewolves can I put on screen? That was important. And then it became about how I could make them look as menacing as I can. Because I felt like [cinema] kind of went away from that for a while, where they became either humanoid wolves or they became sparkly wolves, or they were just wolves, literal wolves in the wild. So for me, it was about trying to get back to that classic ’80s sort of “man in a suit” vib...

Polygon • 11th November 2024

The host of Dropout’s Smartypants tells you how to throw a banger PowerPoint party

“You just need people that are willing to have fun with each other. You could have all the other elements, but if you don’t have a good chemistry or vibe, it’s just like any other party where you’re like, Oh, this is a new friend, or God, a friend’s new boyfriend. And then everyone’s having an awful time talking to the friend’s boyfriend. He’s super weird. You’re like, Why is my friend dating him? And if you have to hear a presentation from that guy, no way. Maybe pre-screen your presentations i...

Polygon • 19th October 2024

The art of gore: Timo Tjahjanto on why keeping movie action bloody is a matter of ‘respect’

I think there was a phase in my life — when I just started as a filmmaker, I did this little film with Kimo [Stamboel], my friend. It’s called Macabre, one of the first Indonesian slasher films. And I think at the time, our goal was like, Let’s be the goriest Indonesian flick ever. But weirdly, after The Night Comes for Us and everything, I just don’t feel like I was necessarily aiming for gore. I think it’s just that there needs to be a certain, weirdly enough, respect to violence and what it c...