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‘Top Gun,’ ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean,’ ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ Sequels Coming...On Xbox

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Hollywood unveiled its latest blockbuster “sequels” this morning, with video-game versions of both Top Gun and Pirates of the Caribbean among the 30 titles unveiled at Microsoft’s MSFT Xbox-Bethesda Games joint presentation at the virtual E3 conference.

The content-packed presentation on Day 2 of virtual E3 was the most substantive so far by any company, but perhaps that was little surprise, given that it combined showcases for Microsoft’s nearly two-dozen Xbox game studios and industry heavyweight Bethesda. Until December, when Microsoft purchased Bethesda for $7.5 billion, the giant game publisher had its own E3 showcases for big franchises such as Fallout and Elder Scrolls.

The biggest news for gamers likely was confirmation of Halo Infinite as a free-to-play multiplayer coming in the fall, more game-play video for EA’s multiplayer first-person shooter Battlefield 2042, and a new Bethesda franchise, open-world vampire shooter Redfall, coming next year and given a sardonic and cinematic narrative trailer by way of introduction. Other Microsoft franchises such as Forza and Age of Empires also are getting sleek new sequels.

But two of the biggest showcases of the day involved Microsoft-owned franchises that definitely borrowed some Hollywood glitz for a boost.

Pirates key characters Jack Sparrow and cephalopod-faced Davy Jones will appear as part of a stand-alone expansion of Sea of Thieves, the open-world multiplayer action-adventure game built around, yes, pirates, in perhaps one of the most natural segues from film to game imaginable.

Similarly, Top Gun: Maverick, a film sequel to the 1986 hit that marked one of Tom Cruise’s early blockbusters, is now set for a December release. The ability to fly the movie’s jet fighters now will be appear as part of Microsoft’s oldest franchise, Flight Simulator.

The Pirates and Top Gun showcases weren’t the only ones with a Hollywood edge to them. Twelve Minutes features a top-notch voice cast of Daisy Ridley, James McAvoy, and Willem Dafoe. The title arrives Aug. 19, and like most of those showcased today, will be available from launch day on Microsoft’s Windows and Xbox subscription service, Game Pass.

And it wasn’t just Microsoft showing off big Hollywood characters.

Square Enix showcased its own Disney license, Marvel Guardians of the Galaxy, a “story-driven action adventure” that allows the gamer to play as Peter Quill, the Star Lord. The game is scheduled to debut Oct. 26. Notably, the Star Lord character does not look like nor sound like Chris Pratt, though the tongue-in-cheek sensibility of the movies remain intact.

And NBCUniversal’s dinosaur movie franchise gets another real-time strategy sequel too, with Jurassic World Evolution 2, featuring the voices of Jeff Goldblum and Bryce Dallas Howard, both from the movies.

That’s not the case for Pirates in Sea of Thieves, whose Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones characters look and sound very much like their movie equivalents. The Jack Sparrow voice-over actor featured in the Sea of Thieves trailer unveiled today is clearly not the movies’ Johnny Depp, but shares a similar fey and perpetually drunken sensibility.

The video-game approach for Sea of Thieves marks a useful workaround for one major challenge facing any further Pirates sequel: Depp’s gender-bending, eternally impaired performance as Jack Sparrow helped drive massive success for five Pirates of the Caribbean films, which grossed $4.5 billion just in theaters, and for a time made Depp Hollywood’s highest paid actor.

But the past decade has seen Depp’s star significantly tarnished by a string of unsuccessful film projects and more importantly off-screen, domestic abuse allegations found to be “substantially true” as part of a high-profile libel trial that Depp lost.

For Disney DIS , it’s a way to reclaim the franchise in an organic fashion without venturing into the uncharted waters of a post-Depp movie. For Sea of Thieves, it’s chance to goose up interest in one of its lesser subscription titles with a structured, big-name adventure.

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