Anthony Hopkins is such a serious actor that he can bring a bit of gravitas to even the most frivolous of films. For proof of this, look no further than the Thor franchise, where his turn as the irascible Odin lent instant credibility to a superhero story that could easily have come off as silly/campy.
According to Entertainment Weekly, he’ll soon do the same for Michael Bay’s Transformers: The Last Knight, the fifth film in the franchise that pits oversized metamorphosing robots against one another as the fate of humanity hangs in the balance. As others have pointed out, hearing Hopkins voice emanate from a skyscraper-sized robot would be quite an experience, but, unsurprisingly, it looks like the actor will be playing an actual human being. What sort of human being remains a mystery, however, as the details of his role are still pretty well under wraps.
At this point, there are plenty of moviegoers whose eyes will roll at the mere mention of Michael Bay, so getting Hopkins really was a coup if this project is looking to make a play for those interested something beyond the typical “popcorn flick” experience. It should help with the critics as well, as the franchise’s first four films were all rated “rotten” on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.
The message below was posted to the film’s Facebook page earlier today and those associated with the film seem pretty excited to have him on board.
The role adds to a busy slate for the 79-year-old Hopkins, who recently filmed HBO’s Westworld and will also appear in the upcoming thriller Collide, as well as in Thor: Ragnarok. We probably speak for most movie fans when we say that we hope the actor never slows down.
Transformers: The Last Knight hits theaters June 23, 2017, and also stars Mark Wahlberg, Josh Duhamel, and Isabela Moner (Growing Up Fisher).
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?