Harry Potter author, J.K. Rowling, is teaming up with Sony to bring the magic of Hogwarts into your living room.  The new game for the PS3 titled “Wonderbook: Book of Spells” is an innovative approach at combining reading with augmented reality gaming.  “Book of Spells” is both the first release for the PS3′s new “Wonderbook” peripheral and the first product from the joint venture of Sony and Rowling’s “Pottermore.” The game will feature new written content from Rowling herself along with spell-practice via the Playstation Move Motion Controller (which is the wand Ollivander is now contractually obligated to hand out to new students).  “Wonderbook: Book of Spells” debuts this November in Europe and this December in North America, with further releases to follow.  Hit the jump to check out the press release.

The trailers coming out of the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo have been blowing my mind and promise to blow a hole in my wallet when the new games become available.  If you missed our previous batches of trailers, you can check them out here and here (and don’t miss our villainous update on the new Star Trek game!).  The next round of trailers and demos features the much anticipated Star Wars 1313, in which players control a bounty hunter on one of the many levels of the city-planet, Coruscant.  We’ve also got the next installment in the epic Assassin’s Creed franchise, as well as a contemporary take on assassins from Ubisoft,  a new game from the makers of Heavy Rain which features the voice and likeness of Ellen Page and more!  Hit the jump to check them out.

While you may have to wait a while to find out who the antagonist is in J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek sequel, Star Trek the video game has put its villains front and center.  The Gorn, a lizard-like race of alien warriors Hell-bent on conquering the galaxy, will terrorize Captain James T. Kirk and Mr. Spock in the Paramount Pictures and Namco Bandai game.  The cast of Star Trek, including Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, Karl Urban, John Cho and Anton Yelchin will lend their voices to the game.  The standalone co-op is based on Abrams’ original Star Trek and continues the adventures of the iconic heroes.  Players will control Kirk and Spock as they traverse across unexplored planets and alien battleships in an attempt to stop the Gorn in an original story written by BAFTA award-winner, Marianne Krawczyk (God of War) with Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman.  Plenty of new images and concept art await you, along with the fully detailed press release, after the jump.  As this announcement was made as part of the ongoing Electronic Entertainment Expo, catch up on all of our previous coverage of E3 here.

This past week brought us a story that is near and dear to me. While I briefly give my own thoughts regarding DC Comics’ Watchmen prequel comic series after the jump, I want to use the “Top 5′s” opening paragraph space to invite readers to voice/type their own opinions on the announcement in the comments section. As a fervent fan of the series, I’m always interested to hear fellow fans’ take on Watchmen adaptations, prequels, and the like. So, with that said, what do you think? Does the creative talent involved interest you? Is it the best idea ever? The worst? Somewhere in between? Sound off in the comments.

In addition to DC’s Before Watchmen announcement, this installment of the “Top 5″ includes interviews with the cast and director of superhero/found-footage pic Chronicle, a “What If?” look at a 16-Bit Breaking Bad RPG, ten things to know about Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax, and Sundance 2012 video interviews with Bradley Cooper, Paul Dano and more. A brief recap and link to each follows after the jump.

If we get ultra-violent video games and shovelware TV and movie tie-ins, is it too much to ask that we combine the two (without the crap, rushed video game programming)?  College Humor came up with a nice alternate universe where we still made 16-bit RPGs and then tied one to Breaking Bad.  It’s not only fun, but a great way to sum up every season!  If you’re opposed to any kind of Breaking Bad parody, you should A) lighten up; and B) remember that the show has a sense of humor.  It’s a ridiculously dark sense of humor, but that’s part of what makes the show so amazing.

Hit the jump to check out Breaking Bad in 16-bit RPG form.

With directors Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein’s Underworld: Awakening opening this weekend, I recently got to sit down with most of the cast to talk about making the movie.  Kate Beckinsale returns as Selene, “who escapes imprisonment to find herself in a world where humans have discovered the existence of both Vampire and Lycan clans, and are conducting an all-out war to eradicate both immortal species.”  Stephen Rea, Michael Ealy, Theo James, India Eisley, and Charles Dance also star.

During my interview with Ealy we talked about how he got involved in the Underworld franchise, did he watch the previous films, was he disappointed to play a human character, deleted scenes, and how much changed between when he first got the script to being on set.  In addition, we also talked about video games, karaoke, the difference between acting on a TV show and in the movies, and what else he has coming up in 2012.  Hit the jump to watch.

We usually don’t cover video games at Collider, but we’re excited out of our minds for Batman: Arkham City, the follow-up to the stellar 2009 game Batman: Arkham Asylum.  The sequel takes the action to the streets of Gotham where former Arkham warden Quincy Sharp has now become mayor and designated a section of the city as an even larger prison.  Game Director Sefton Hill recently told IGN that the game will have no multiplayer because they wanted to focus all of their attention on the single-player experience.  I am totally down with that.  I would far prefer an excellent, solo-player game than a disappointing re-tread coupled with uninspired multiplayer (I’m looking at you, Bioshock 2).

We’ve been sent four new screenshots from the game.  Hit the jump to check them out.  Batman: Arkham City is set to be released on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC this fall.

It’s not difficult to see the video game influences in Christopher Nolan’s Inception.  Ellen Page’s character is tasked with creating “levels” and various obstacles therein.  And while the film doesn’t naturally lend itself to a straight sequel, Nolan isn’t done with the world he’s created.  Speaking to Variety, Nolan said “one thing we are looking at doing is developing a video game based on the world of the film, which has all kinds of ideas that you can’t fit into a feature film.  That’s something we’ve been talking about and are looking at doing long-term, in a couple of years.”  The viral campaign website for Inception already offered a video game of sorts as players were asked to draw a maze and then run through it.

Inception has currently raked in $753 million worldwide.  It will hit DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on December 6th and is expected to hit shelves in the US before the year’s end.