The closed beta for Minecraft Earth is opening in two cities.
The game is available in Seattle and London.
Anyone living in those two cities who has signed up for the closed beta could get an invite.
You can still sign up for the closed beta right now.
Minecraft Earth is an upcoming augmented reality (AR) game that aims to bring the world of Minecraft to your phones, in the vein of something like Pokémon Go. While it’s still early, the team at Mojang has shared some great news: the Minecraft Earth closed beta is beginning in Seattle and London right now!
If you live in Seattle or London and you’ve signed up for the closed beta, go check your email because there’s a decent chance you’ve been invited. “Thousands” of invites have already been sent out and more are no doubt coming. If you don’t live in either Seattle or London, keep in mind that the closed beta is just now rolling out, it’ll expand to other cities in the future.
If you haven’t signed up yet, don’t worry: you can still register for the closed beta right now. If there’s anything else you want to know about Minecraft Earth, our Xbox Senior Editor, Jez Corden, has a cohesive wrap-up right here. How does monetization work? Just what are players allowed to do? Do you have to walk around everywhere like in other AR games? The questions to all these and much, much more are covered.
If you’ve been waiting to check out Minecraft Earth (Mojang’s Pokémon GO-style augmented reality reimagining of its hugely popular game, Minecraft), good news: it’s starting to roll out to some people now.
The catch? It’s only available to a slice-of-a-slice of the world, at first.
After opening a registration system for its closed beta just a few days ago, the company says that it sent out the first batch of beta invites this afternoon.
The beta is being rolled out on a region-by-region basis, with randomly picked players in Seattle and London getting access at first. Mojang says more cities should go live in “the next few days,” but doesn’t get any more specific than that.
It’s also worth noting that the beta is iOS only for now; Android support is on the way, but it won’t land until later this summer.
Our own Devin Coldewey went hands-on with an early build of Minecraft Earth a few months ago — check out his first impressions here.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for The Lion King, in theaters Friday nationwide.
Disney’s live-action adaptation of The Lion King doesn’t make a lot of changes to the overarching narrative of the 1994 animated classic. Although somewhat understated, its few alterations are to character motivations. A handful of the supporting players are tweaked here and there, contributing new layers.
And no one receives as much of an update as Shenzi (Florence Kasumba), the leader of the hyena pack. The original movie featured her more as a just another goofy member of the comically inept henchmen for Scar. But in the new film, Shenzi is a much more intimidating and serious character. None of her dialogue is played for laughs, and she’s given a lot more imposing moments to make herself a true threat to the lion pride.
EXCLUSIVE: We’re hearing from non-Disney sources that Jon Favreau’s The Lion King reboot is doing some smashing business tonight with an estimated $22M-$25Moff showtimes that largely started at 6PM (there were 5pm select fan screenings). Again with these estimates, sometimes they can fall outside the range we’re hearing from sources, but overall, it’s a great start.
While that’s not a July Thursday night preview record —Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2‘s midnight shows of $43.5M looks to still hold this record– Lion King‘s Thursday night cash stash is on the low-end above Captain Marvel‘s $20.2M (which repped 33% of its opening day Friday for a $153.4M opening) and on the high-end just under Black Panther‘s $25.2M (33% of Friday, for a $202M 3-day opening).
Bringing tonight within comparisons of Disney live-action adaptations of its classic toons, Lion King is already burying Beauty and theBeast‘s $16.3M Thursday night preview which yielded 26% of its opening day for a $174.7M opening. Heading into the weekend tracking estimates were between $180M-$192M. If Lion King clicks past Deathly Hallows 2‘s $169.1M, then it’s the best domestic opening ever for July. One rival studio marketing executive marveled today, “This film has had a 98 total awareness on tracking for a long time — that’s unheard of!” First choice for The Lion King is leaning heavier toward females than males.
Further evidence that Simba is bound to have a royal weekend: Fandango reports that the Favreau film is the second best pre-seller of 2019 behind Avengers: Endgame. Bad reviews with that Rotten Tomatoes of 56%? Well, Lion King is just all Hakuna Matata about all that when it comes to RT impacting its B.O. prospects.
Tomorrow, Lion King opens in 4,725 theaters becoming the widest domestic theatrical release of all-time, unseating Avengers: Endgame‘s first weekend footprint of 4,662. Abroad Lion King has already roared past $100M, a bulk of that from China. We’ll have more updates for you in the morning.
Take the real-world exploration of Pokémon GO and mash it up with the building elements of Minecraft and you get Minecraft Earth.
While there’s no launch date for the game, Mojang has been saying for a while now that a closed beta would go live sometime “this summer.” If you’re looking to get in early, good news: they just opened up registration.
Alas, because it’s a closed beta, registering doesn’t guarantee you access — but in its FAQ about the beta, the team notes that they’re planning to open it up to “hundreds of thousands of players” eventually, so your odds of getting in probably aren’t too bad. You’ll need to be over the age of 18, have a device running iOS 10/Android 7 or newer and a Microsoft or Xbox Live account to get registered.
The best scene in Disney’s incredibly photo-realistic remake of The Lion King features a computer-generated beetle rolling a ball of computer-generated dung across a computer-generated African landscape. It might sound mundane, but this particular ball of dung is carrying a tuft of fur from the runaway lion Simba, and its eventual discovery will renew hope that the rightful king of the savanna is alive and well. It’s a funny, touching reminder that in the circle of life, every little creature and every lump of waste has an important role to play.
The best thing about this scene is that it’s completely wordless, and it convinced me that this Lion King would have been far better as a silent movie, one that treated its newfangled visual style as more than just a digital face-lift. But that wouldn’t have suited Disney’s game plan: to produce an essentially risk-free remake of the 1994 animated film that remains one of its all-time greatest hits.
The Hamlet-inspired plot is nearly identical to the original. So are Elton John’s memorable songs and Tim Rice’s less memorable lyrics, this time sung by a solid voice cast that includes Donald Glover, John Oliver and Beyoncé. (The soundtrack also includes a new Beyoncé song called “Spirit.”) The crucial difference is that, instead of the original’s gorgeous hand-drawn visuals, the new movie looks and feels like live-action, an illusion achieved through a sophisticated mix of digital imagery and virtual-reality techniques.
The result plays like a Hollywood blockbuster disguised as a National Geographic documentary, or perhaps the world’s most expensive safari-themed karaoke video. The movie feels both overwhelmed by its technical virtuosity and shackled by its fidelity to the source material. It begins with a nearly shot-for-shot re-creation of the first film’s famous opening sequence: The sun rises over the landscape; the lush, soaring melody of “Circle of Life” rings out; and some very persuasive-looking elephants, zebras, giraffes and other critters gather to celebrate the birth of Simba, an adorable little cub destined to succeed his father, Mufasa, as king of the Pride Lands.
As shot by the cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, it’s a majestic, if redundant, sequence, a sign that we’ve seen this all before. Then the familiar plot kicks in, the characters start talking and singing, and your sense of wonderment may turn to confusion. The animals’ lips may match their dialogue, but there’s next to nothing going on behind the eyes: Who knew photo-realistic lions were this bad at emoting? You can’t fault the actors: James Earl Jones, who voiced Mufasa in the earlier film, reprises that role here with his signature gravity. And Chiwetel Ejiofor strikes the right note of menace as Mufasa’s brother Scar, who plots to kill both father and son by luring the unsuspecting Simba down into a gorge, placing him directly in the path of a wildebeest stampede.
Within minutes, Mufasa is dead and a heartbroken Simba is on the run, leaving Scar and his vicious hyena allies to take over the savanna. At this point, the movie shifts abruptly into zany comedy mode, as Simba befriends the amiably loud-mouthed duo of Timon the meerkat and Pumbaa the warthog. They’re voiced by Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen, and their energetic banter and their performance of that classic slacker anthem “Hakuna Matata” — it means “no worries” — give the story an undeniable lift.
Laughing at this movie is a lot easier than taking it seriously. Soon the grown-up Simba, now voiced by Donald Glover, is reunited with his childhood friend Nala, played by Beyoncé. But when they launch into “Can You Feel the Love Tonight,” not even the actors’ lovely voices can bring these lions’ dead-eyed come-hither expressions to life.
I’ve never been the biggest fan of the original Lion King, which beneath its brightly entertaining surface has always struck me as too emotionally calculated by half. But that film feels like a triumph of form and content next to this movie, because its story about a fictional animal kingdom feels so vividly and gloriously cartoonish in every detail. The new Lion King is so realistic-looking that, paradoxically, you can’t believe a moment of it. And although it was directed by Jon Favreau, who previously shepherded a wild menagerie in his recent remake of The Jungle Book, it has none of the imagination that made that movie more than just a high-tech retread.
Disney is in the midst of an ongoing campaign to update its beloved animated classics for a new generation, from the recent Dumbo and Aladdin to upcoming versions of Mulan and The Little Mermaid. Some of these remakes have been more inspired than others, but few have felt quite as futile as The Lion King. This isn’t the circle of life; it’s more like a creative dead end.
