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Move over GTA 6, a new Bonnie and Clyde may be hitting your consoles soon. This time, they’re in it for the carrots.

Violet and Marlowe Rob a Bank, a 3D animated music video from filmmaker Wesley Wang, just won the short film award at the 2026 Tribeca Festival. And now the 22-year-old creator has his sights set on video games. I spoke exclusively with Wang in the wake of his Tribeca win on his plans for adapting the short into a game, a potential theatrical prequel, and the Easter egg that most fans missed.

“We have two [game ideas] that we're trying to figure out,” Wang says. “It would definitely be 3D animation, but one of them, you're dropped into one of these factories and you rob these carrots. Then you come back to this one place where you then trade in those carrots for better furniture and you build up your home and you just keep going back. It's kind of like a first person shooter game [in] a repeatable format.

“There's another one that would be more story-based where you have to complete a quest. It would definitely revolve around Violent and Marlowe robbing these factories or banks and amassing carrots in a way to revolt against the government.”

Wang, who shares a manager with Backrooms writer-director Kane Parsons , says theaters, streaming, and YouTube are all on the table when it comes to his future in filmmaking.

“I know Kane pretty well,” Wang says. “We've talked about this whole idea of the creator economy. It’s just a term. I think we're all creators and mediums are just a way to express your art.”

In the short film, which also serves as the official music video for the New York-based band Adore’s song “Feel It Again,” Violet and Marlowe are two Calico Critters-style bunnies from the countryside who start a revolution after the evil President Rabbit monopolizes the world’s supply of carrots. The husband-and-wife duo take matters into their own hands, committing a series of violent factory heists to shake up the system.

“I'm pretty agnostic to where my things come out,” Wang says. “I have a lot of theatrical things I want to make. It just turns out that the things that are cheaper to make and easier to make are on digital. One of our major goals with this company is that everything we make starts out online but has a future in theaters or streaming platforms like Netflix or Hulu.”

Although the short doesn’t have any bloodshed per se, Wang says the brutality of the storyline was a deliberate choice.

“I [was] down to make this as violent as possible,” Wang says. “We go full Tarantino with this. I think there’s just something funny about the juxtaposition between the innocence of bunnies and the violence of what they're actually doing. This is adult animation [but] the violence is not very gory. They're obviously bunnies, but they get down to business.”

At the end of Violet and Marlowe Rob a Bank, Marlowe sacrifices himself in order to take down President Rabbit. The last shot sees Violet mourning at his graveside. Wang says that, even though Marlowe seemingly meets his end, there might be more to the story.

“I don’t want to give too much away,” Wang says. “But a lot of people have actually pointed out in the comments of the YouTube video that if you look at the end of the short, in [Violet’s] eyes, you can see the reflection of him.”

In part because of the uncertainty around what actually happens at the end of the story, Wang says that he has big plans for a feature-length prequel film.

“We do have a feature that I'm very passionate about,” Wang says. “We’re going to go out with it to a bunch of studios. That’s the ultimate goal with this one. I do want it to be a prequel.”

While Wang has designs on expanding his filmmaking to theaters or prestige streamers, he says his roots will always be in YouTube and has no plans to abandon that platform.

“To me, success is in both realms,” Wang says. “This YouTube stuff is not a means to an end. The great thing about these videos is that they live on forever and people can watch them two, three years after they get made. And same thing with films. Even if I [end up like] Christopher Nolan or Quentin Tarantino, I'd be still making stuff on YouTube.

“I want to experiment with animation. Obviously I'm not the one animating, but that’s a way for me to still get my vision across. I think there's going to be a lot more genres that I want to explore. We're working on a murder mystery next.”

Michael Peyton is the Senior Editorial Director of Events & Entertainment at IGN, leading entertainment content and coverage of tentpole events including IGN Live, San Diego Comic Con, gamescom, and IGN Fan Fest. He's spent 20 years working in the games and entertainment industry, and his adventures have taken him everywhere from the Oscars to Japan to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Follow him on Bluesky @MichaelPeyton

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Most Meccha Chameleon clips that come across my feeds depict a hide-and-seek game where artistic skills rule the world. Anyone with an eye for color can blend into a painting so well that I need someone to draw a big red arrow to see them. But I found one player who has proven that you don't need any of that if you're confident enough.

There's nothing in the rules about not hiding at all, as X user RNGeezMC demonstrated in a recent clip. Against the right players (AKA strangers), anything is possible.

"I play in Meccha Chameleon public lobbies like I'm performing a Turing test on the other players," they wrote.

Instead of disguising themself as a piece of scenery, RNGeezMC coats their featureless body in white and walks around as if they were a seeker. Nobody seems to notice the slightly smaller player walking around without a shotgun in their hand, including the other hiders when they swap sides.

RNGeezMC doesn't even try very hard to stay out of the seekers' first-person camera, either. At one point they stand in front of a player who is so focused on the hunt that they just push them out of the way. RNGeezMC raises their hands like they're surrendering—a gesture that I don't think seekers can even perform—and still gets away unscathed.

hiding is for amateurs https://t.co/u9q8ehAtYx pic.twitter.com/Bc3etzjouL June 26, 2026

The match eventually comes to an end and you can hear RNGeezMC in disbelief that it worked at all. They were right when they said "hiding is for amateurs," because you can apparently win purely by exploiting the fact that everyone is too busy scrutinizing everything to notice the imposter running around.

That's another point in Meccha Chameleon's favor, if you ask me. It's already incredible to watch people hide underneath tables and up against paintings using the game's rudimentary painting system, but it's even better to see that it's possible to ignore the point of the game and succeed anyway.

"Meccha Chameleon is the first breakout game in years where I feel like I'm applying skills and understanding with broader relevance, and as a result it's more rewarding," PC Gamer's Lincoln Carpenter wrote in his Meccha Chameleon review . Hiding in plain sight like RNGeezMC feels like the kind of clever thinking another game might punish you for. But not Meccha Chameleon: Understanding that people wouldn't ever expect someone to subvert the rules is a valid tactic.

That's the beauty of this strange little game that has exploded in popularity over the last few weeks, selling over 10 million copies . For $6, you can give the RNGeezMC method a shot and see how many lobbies you tick off in the process.

2026 games : All the upcoming games

Best PC games : Our all-time favorites

Free PC games : Freebie fest

Best FPS games : Finest gunplay

Best RPGs : Grand adventures

Best co-op games : Better together

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The venerable C-2A Greyhound carrier onboard delivery (COD) aircraft made its final flight to an aircraft carrier, a U.S. Navy official confirmed to TWZ . This final trap, which took place last week aboard the USS Nimitz , marks the end of nearly 60 years of providing logistics services to America’s flattops. That role has now been completely turned over to the Navy’s fleet of CMV-22B Osprey tiltrotor aircraft , the official told us, marking the end of an era in naval aviation.

On June 25, Greyhounds belonging to the “Rawhides” of Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 40 made the last arrested landing and catapult launch from a carrier, the official added. Though the Greyhounds won’t land on carriers anymore, they will still be flying until later this year when they are anticipated to be fully retired, barring any major contingencies.

You can read more about what it was like to fly a Greyhound in our deep-dive interview with a former pilot here .

A C-2A Greyhound, attached to the “Rawhides” of Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 40, takes off from the flight deck of the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), making the last ever catapult launch of a Greyhound on June 25, 2026. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Peter K. McHaddad)

Janes was the first to report the last carrier mission of the Greyhound.

“Vice Admiral Doug Perry, commander of both the Joint Force Command Norfolk and the US 2nd Fleet, joined Nimitz as the ship travelled north from Mayport, Florida, toward New York City,” the publication stated. “Adm. Perry and several reporters, including Janes , boarded the Greyhounds as the C-2s were catapulted off Nimitz at about 1800 local time, marking the aircraft’s final expected COD takeoff.”

Greyhounds were aboard the Nimitz along with the T-1 demonstrator for the MQ-25 Stingray unmanned tanker program and a number of Super Hornets, all of which are taking part in a large multinational exercise associated with America’s 250th birthday. The C-2s on the other hand didn’t linger around.

The Greyhound, a derivative of the Navy’s E-2 Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft, first entered service in the late 1960s and replaced the piston-engined C-1 Trader in the COD role.

An E-2D Hawkeye, assigned to Airborne Command & Control Squadron (VAW) 117, flies over the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72). (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Apprentice Daniel Kimmelman) Seaman Daniel Kimmelman

“The original C-2A aircraft were overhauled to extend their operational life in 1973,” the U.S. Naval Academy noted . “In 1984, a contract was awarded for 39 new C-2A aircraft to replace the earlier airframes. Dubbed the Reprocured C-2A due to the similarity to the original aircraft, the new C-2A includes substantial airframe and avionic systems improvements. All the older C-2As were phased out in 1987, and the last of the new models was delivered in 1990.”

Greyhound’s replacement, the CMV-22B, was declared Initial Operational Capability (IOC) in 2021 . While the Program of Record has 48 CMV-22Bs projected, the Navy currently plans to procure only 44 aircraft.

A CMV-22B Osprey hovering. (Petty Officer 3rd Class Derek Kelley) Petty Officer 3rd Class Derek Kelley

As we noted in previous coverage , the advent of the Ospreys was seen as a “game-changer” by senior Navy officials.

“With distributed maritime ops, longer ranges, distances between multi-carrier operations, distances from land-based areas, and the ability for the CMV-22B to plop down on unimproved spaces, it proved to be a game-changer for us on deployment,” Vice Adm. Kenneth Whitesell, then-commander of Naval Air Forces (NAVAIR) and Naval Air Force, U.S. Pacific Fleet, said during a 2022 Maritime Security Dialogue event .

From our past story :

“ Powered by two Rolls-Royce Liberty AE1107C engines, each delivering 6,200 shaft horsepower, the Osprey has a range of about 1,150 nautical miles with a 6,000-pound internal payload, Whitesell noted at the time. It’s also capable of aerial refueling, while the C-2 is not .

By comparison, the Greyhound , powered by two Allison T56-A-425 turboprop engines each delivering 4,600 shaft horsepower, has a range of about 1,000 nautical miles .

Then there was the issue of being able to land on an aircraft carrier at night.

Whitesell said the CMV-22B can do that, while the Navy has been ‘reticent in the past’ to allow Greyhounds to do night carrier landings ‘based on the avionics in that platform .’”

There are various other advantages and disadvantages of each platform. For instance, the C-2 is pressurized and can fly at higher altitudes, over weather, while the CMV-22 is not and flies at lower altitudes.

Navy CMV-22B Ospreys landing on an aircraft carrier. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Emma Burgess)

While the Navy was moving to retire the Greyhounds, the Ospreys encountered a number of problems. Key among them was a three-month-long grounding of virtually all Osprey tiltrotors worldwide following the fatal crash of a U.S. Air Force CV-22B off the coast of Japan in 2023 .

The 2023 CV-22 crash “was definitely a wake-up call for many of us who are anticipating transitioning from the C-2 to the CMV-22,” Rear Adm. Douglas ‘V8’ Verissimo, then commander of Naval Air Force Atlantic (AIRLANT), said bluntly last year . “The C-2 crews, with some venerable old aircraft, stepped up and took care of business. An unexpected surge in the requirement to maintain carrier onboard delivery [COD] to our aircraft carriers going forward.”

A C-2A Greyhound assigned to the Providers of Fleet Logistics Support Squadron 30 lands aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz . (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Peter Merrill)

In the wake of that incident, there were flight restrictions placed on the Ospreys that limited the range they could fly, which impacted their COD role. However, after mechanical fixes were made, the Navy began lifting those restrictions in January, a Navy official told us.

“For security reasons, the specific thresholds, numbers of aircraft affected, and details of added controls are not releasable,” the official added.

There have also been relatively damning reports about the CMV-22’s ability to do the COD mission from the Pentagon’s own testing force, nonetheless less the C-2’s final retirement has drawn closer.

Future and the past: C-2s sit next to the T-1 MQ-25 demonstrator, representing the future on unmanned naval air warfare. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Johnathan McCune) Seaman Johnathan McCune

Regardless of how the CMV-22Bs are still restricted, the Navy apparently feels confident enough in the Osprey to move the C-2A Greyhound one step closer to retirement. At the same time, there can be no doubt that while the Navy gains new capabilities with the Osprey, it loses others with the C-2. Beyond that, the workhorse nature of the C-2 is a known and proven quantity, while the CMV-22 is still having its teething issues.

No matter the aircraft, COD is a ‘no-fail’ mission that enables the entire carrier strike group. With that in mind, the CMV-22 will have some big flight boots to finally fill alone once the C-2 leaves the service later this year.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

The post The C-2 Greyhound Has Made Its Last Trap Aboard A Carrier appeared first on TWZ .

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On the occasion of its 25th anniversary today, it’s worth noting a certain sense of irony that Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" seems oddly prescient into today’s AI-obsessed environment, especially when compared to the master director’s recently released " Disclosure Day ," which sadly feels three decades late to the whole governmental cover-up UFO/UAP party.

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence's" path to the silver screen is a strange odyssey, one that includes two of the world's greatest filmmakers, a '60s short story about global warming and advanced robots, a child star hot off a horror hit, multiple production starts and stops, and even a crazy sudden death conspiracy theory.

This $75 million futuristic fairy tale was filmed in a dreamy, desaturated preternatural haze that draws audiences into its emotional depths, making "A.I." one of Spielberg’s finest films made during what can be considered his darker, more serious period of moviemaking.

Released by Warner Brothers on June 29, 2001, the mature sci-fi film attracted a diverse audience that was mesmerized by the depiction of a climate-changed world and the advancement of artificial humans called mechas. It tells the story of a couple whose child is stricken with a fatal disease, causing them to purchase David, a new model of android child programmed to love.

When their son recovers, conflict between the human and mecha becomes hazardous, and David is disposed of, where he meets up with a band of stray robots. Attuned to the fairy tale of "Pinocchio" and yearning to become a real boy, David and his A.I. toy bear Teddy embark on a strange road trip to a flooded Manhattan to find the Blue Fairy, who might grant him his wish.

25 years later, "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" feels even more timely (Image credit: Warner Bros.) Spielberg naturally brought along his faithful A-list team of Oscar-winning collaborators that included cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, editor Michael Kahn, and composer John Williams for this PG-13 sci-fi adventure whose eventual global box office take was a respectable $236 million.

Starring Haley Joel Osment, Frances O’Connor, Jude Law, Sam Robards, Brendan Gleeson, and William Hurt, "A.I." was a brilliant storm of spectacular visual effects, especially observed in the Flesh Fair set pieces where robots were forced into gladiatorial battles to entertain post-apocalyptic crowds.

Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment in the decadent Rogue City from "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (Image credit: Warner Bros.) Law has a lot of ribald fun with his pleasure model android called Gigolo Joe, who rescues David and brings him into his fold as they travel to meet their 'maker' in a sort of twisted "Wizard of Oz"-like journey. Robin Williams also voices an amusing interactive search engine conceived in the likeness of Albert Einstein and aptly called Dr. Know.

Fresh from his role as Cole Sear, aka the "I see dead people" kid in M. Night Shyamalan’s "The Sixth Sense," Osment gives a shattering performance here as an innocent machine hoping to fulfill its programming and be loved as a real boy. It's been noted that Osment doesn't blink once in the film, and he displays an incredible depth of feeling on screen for such a young actor.

Steven Spielberg working with Haley Joel Osment on the set of "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (Image credit: Warner Bros.) "A.I.'s" narrative also returns to one of the major themes seen in Spielberg’s catalog, that of the dissolving family unit. It’s been well documented and discussed over the years that his parents’ divorce when he was 19 had a devastating effect on Spielberg.

That trauma of fractured families has been well played out in numerous Spielberg movies, including " Close Encounters of the Third Kind ," "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial," "Empire of the Sun," "War of the Worlds," and is even revealed in detail in "The Fabelmans."

Here in "A.I.", the broken home that Haley Joel Osment’s android character, David, experiences feels even more raw. His adoring mother, Monica, sensing David's emotional instability and fearing for her family’s life, drives her robo-child out to the woods and abandons him as he desperately begs her to stop. It’s a tearful, heart-wrenching moment few viewers forget.

"A.I. Artificial Intelligence" began life as a 1969 short story by author Brian Aldiss titled "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long." It’s a brief read with a twist ending that we won’t spoil here.

Adapting the futuristic tale of a flooded New York City, a Cybertronics engineer, his family, a next-generation synthetic child, and a robotic teddy bear was a passion project of the great Stanley Kubrick. The meticulous filmmaker made several attempts to crack the plot with numerous writers, including Sara Maitland, Ian Watson, and Brian Aldiss himself, but it never quite coalesced into a finished script.

Spielberg was then brought in as a potential director in 1995, and the two cinematic geniuses collaborated for years to map out the story. Upon Kubrick's surprising death in 1999 (some believing foul play for revealing industry secrets), four days following the release of "Eyes Wide Shut," Spielberg agreed to complete the project for his friend and mentor and eventually drafted the finished screenplay.

It's naturally a bit of a cobbled-together effort with so many ideas cooked in, but it all works as a type of existential exploration of the role of artificial beings in future society, our responsibility to our intelligent creations, and their emotional potential.

A dreamy scene from Steven Spielberg's "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (Image credit: Warner Bros.) Trying to stay true to Kubrick’s ideals, Spielberg was intimately involved in the writing, producing, and directing of "A.I.," which represents one of only two films in his entire career where that creative trifecta occurred, the other film project being 2022’s "The Fabelmans."

Coming off of 1998's triumphant "Saving Private Ryan," 2001's "A.I." continued the pattern of Spielberg’s serious segment of his career in a run that included four science fiction movies dropped over a seven-year period. Besides "A.I.," those additional releases were 2002’s "Minority Report," 2005’s "War of the Worlds," and 2008’s "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." The master wouldn’t revisit the genre again for ten years until 2018’s "Ready Player One."

Advancements in digital visual effects in the decade of the 2000s benefited from the millions of dollars poured into franchises like "Star Wars," "Harry Potter," "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Transformers." "A.I." was one of the first to benefit from that infusion of innovation that kicked off with the first "Star Wars" prequel, 1999's " The Phantom Menace ."

Technology not being up to depicting a life-like robot was one of the sticking points for Kubrick, but a combo of practical effects from Stan Winston Studio and CGI did the trick.

Haley Joel Osment and Jude Law in "A.I. Artificial Intelligence" (Image credit: Warner Bros.) Another creative synthesis between Kubrick and Spielberg regarding "A.I.'s" story involves their shared love of Carlo Collodi’s classic children’s story, "The Adventures of Pinocchio," with Kubrick's vision of the film as a sort of Pinocchio with robots. Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" contains several references to the Disney animated "Pinocchio" as well.

The fusion of Kubrick's bleak, unflattering view of human nature paired with Spielberg's wondrous warmth and sentimentality makes for a unique cinematic cocktail that keeps "A.I." fresh and relevant.

One controversial element of "A.I." is the ending with the humanoid aliens using the guise of the Blue Fairy to grant David’s wish of one last day with his mother and the recurring motif of his wanting to become a real boy and simply be loved.

Advanced mechas thousand of years in the future watch David and the Blue Fairy interact in "A.I. Artificial Intelligence." (Image credit: Warner Bros.) It’s a bittersweet finale that’s not without its detractors, but the simple fact that it's still fertile territory for spirited debate points to the movie's lasting importance in Spielberg’s oeuvre, and one that remains even more topical and timely today on "A.I.'s" milestone 25th birthday.

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