MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 20, 2026--
Today Best Buy is launching Best Buy Gamers in beta, a new online destination that gives gaming fans a more personalized way to explore gaming content, the latest tech and gear, special offers and sweepstakes, experiences and more. And as part of the launch, Best Buy and IGN are partnering to bring gamers content right to the experience.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261020436667/en/
Gaming is one of the biggest ways people experience technology, entertainment and culture. Millions of gamers shop with Best Buy each year, not just for the latest tech, but to try and experience it in stores and get expert advice and support. Best Buy Gamers builds on those relationships with a destination designed around how gamers play and what they care about most.
“For many, gaming isn’t just about playing. It’s the excitement of following new launches, discovering what’s next and being part of the moments that bring gamers together,” said Patrick McGinnis, chief revenue officer at Best Buy. “For decades, Best Buy has been the destination for gamers, and Best Buy Gamers is another way we’re reaching more customers and bringing fans closer to the culture they love, from the lead-up to launch day to the hours spent playing at home.”
The free digital experience is available on BestBuy.com and the Best Buy App starting Oct. 20. As gamers share feedback while it’s testing in beta, Best Buy will continue adding features, content and benefits.
More ways to discover, play and connect
Best Buy Gamers is designed to make it easier for gamers to keep up with what’s next. Instead of searching across multiple places for news, reviews, preorders and deals, customers can find them in one experience that reflects their platforms and interests. Here’s what fans can expect from Best Buy Gamers starting Oct. 20:
Score big with sweepstakes and offers
Best Buy Gamers isn't just about following the action — it’s also about getting the chance to be part of it too. Through the experience, customers can enter special sweepstakes daily, including the chance to win an in-store speed run around a Best Buy 1. The sweepstakes run now through the end of November, and the winner will get two minutes to fill a shopping cart with products and take home all the items they grabbed.
To celebrate the launch, the first customers to create a profile will receive a $5 bonus reward. 2
Disclaimers:
1 NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Ends 11:59 p.m. CT on 11/30/26. Open to legal residents of the 50 US/DC & PR, 18+. Grand Prize winner must travel January 13-15, 2027. See Official Rules for full details on eligibility requirements, how to enter, free method of entry, prize description and limitations. Void where prohibited.
2 Offer valid from 10/20/26-12/31/26, limited to the first 200,000 signups, for My Best Buy™ members. Member must sign up for the Best Buy Gamers profile with their associated My Best Buy membership. Member must have an active My Best Buy™ account and be signed into their associated account before qualifying sign up is made. Bonus rewards are in the form of a promotional certificate. My Best Buy accounts with qualifying sign up will receive a promotional certificate in their My Best Buy account approximately 15 days after sign up. Offer is one-time use only. Promotional certificate will be valid for 30 days from issuance. Offer is nontransferable. Limit of one (1) $5 promotional certificate per member. A valid email address is required and must be linked your My Best Buy account to receive promotional certificate. Subject to My Best Buy Program Terms and Conditions of the program, which can be found at BestBuy.com/MyBestBuyTerms.
Meet Best Buy Gamers: A New Experience Built for Gamers
Everything about “Wildwood” is ambitious. It's a stop-motion animated movie that stretches over two hours, with 230 hand-controlled puppets across 132 sets, shot frame by frame by frame by frame. It sounds exhausting to make and that's also sometimes what it feels like to watch it.
Wildly industrious, terribly quirky and technically dazzling, “Wildwood” is also overly violent and uses labor-intensive world-building to only slightly tweak fairy tale conventions. It's a movie in which individual toes curl and feathers rustle gloriously but the message is a wan, “Don't be in a hurry to grow up.” The technology outstrips the story.
“Wildwood” is based on a 2011 middle-grade fantasy novel written by Colin Meloy, frontman for The Decemberists, and illustrated by his wife, Carson Ellis. The movie has a screenplay by Chris Butler, direction by Travis Knight and a new stomping song by The Decemberists, “The Better Part of Bravery.”
It centers on a sullen teenager, Prue McKeel, who lives in Portland, Oregon, with her overprotective parents — weirdly, her dad totally looks like Post Malone without facial tattoos — and baby brother, Mac. It's VERY Portland, with nice nods to Powell’s City of Books and Voodoo Doughnut. At one point, the filmmakers embrace the weird with a passing image of what looks like a guy on a unicycle playing flaming bagpipes wearing a Darth Vader mask.
Prue doesn't believe in anything but the world she can see outside her window — “I'm not buying it. I don't want any part of your fairy tale,” she says — despite her parents' embrace of spirituality. “There's magic in you,” says dad.
When Prue is looking after Mac one day at the playground, crows snatch him and fly away to a place called the Impassable Wilderness. Prue, nicely voiced by Peyton Elizabeth Lee, naturally pursues, along with a reluctant companion, Curtis, an awkward gamer with a schoolyard crush.
In the wild, there is, of course, a massive data center — no, it's just a fantastically realized forest protected by magic, with light bouncing off ferns and glorious waterfalls. It also has talking animals, bandits, soldiers, farmers, fussy bureaucrats and a stern Dowager Governess (Carey Mulligan), who sounds friendly but may be hiding a nefarious plan. There's a K9 police officer in a tie and a leather jacket who seems pretty smart but nonetheless chases his own tail.
“I don't know whether this is terrifying or adorable,” Prue says, as she encounters rams in suits and tortoises carrying mail on their backs. “Wildwood” is a bit of both; the terrifying includes a beheading, bloody hand-to-hand combat, eyes being gouged out, animals in chains, prisoners shot in cages and a crying baby with a dagger plunging toward his abdomen.
Prue must band together the good humans and animals in this land to defeat the baddies and rescue her brother, uncovering a shocking family secret along the way (and it's not, apparently, that her dad is Post Malone). It's all pretty standard stuff. One thing that isn't standard is the film's hatred for invasive English ivy, but that gets lost in the weeds.
Take a pause for the work that's gone into this: More than 142,000 3D faces were printed for the puppets, 3,800 feathers were crafted for one giant eagle, and the whole thing took so long to make that 85 production babies were born. Some puppets were built with imbedded devices that make them look like they're breathing.
Some of the celebrity voices really stand out, especially a rat by Awkwafina, Jacob Tremblay's Curtis and an owl by Richard E. Grant. But others make little impression. Only at the credits did I learn Tom Waits voiced a coyote.
The filmmakers have been faithful to the world Meloy and Ellis originally created, but it takes a while to get used to. There's an army of snarling coyotes — they're suddenly having a moment thanks to this and “Coyote vs. Acme” — who wear what look like 18th century military uniforms with tall black hats and gold brocade epaulettes. Why is not clear. This forest has muskets and rusty mail gasoline-powered trucks. It’s all very twee, not very organic.
The filmmakers use this fantastical world to try to talk about grief, growing up, environmentalism and unity in the face of fascism, but none convincingly. Why Curtis has to show he's finally a hero only with violence is a sad way to come of age. And what Prue has learned after all this mayhem is unclear. Even so, the sheer amount of labor in this labor of love has to be applauded. One of the best lines appears after the credits: “This film was handmade in Oregon.”
“Wildwood,” a Fathom Entertainment release that opens in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “strong fantasy violence/bloody images, thematic material, suicide-related material, brief partial nudity and language.” Running time: 132 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
This story has been corrected to show the name of the Portland store is Voodoo Doughnut, not Donuts.
Travis Knight, from left, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Carey Mulligan and Jacob Tremblay pose for photographers upon arrival at the premiere for the film "Wildwood" as part of the London film festival in London, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (Photo by Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP)
