In the first Guardians of the Galaxy, Benicio del Toro stole a few scenes as The Collector, the creepy curator of a museum full of objects and life forms from the Marvel universe. But if you were a fan of the character, we’re afraid we have some bad news for you.
The actor recently spoke with ComingSoon and, when asked if he would be reprising as everyone’s favorite hoarder for Guardians of the Galaxy 2, he said, “I don’t think so … They would have told me, I hope.” del Toro went on to add “I do hope to play that character again at some point.”
Curiously enough, these comments make it sound like he would be willing to return if asked — it just doesn’t sound like he was asked. Which of course would beg the question: Why wasn’t he asked? After all, the character was originally was intended to be a recurring member of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Furthermore, this news comes just a few months after his former castmate Zoe Saldana revved up the rumor mill with a video posted to her husband’s (Italian artist Marco Perego-Saldana) Facebook page. In the video, Saldana congratulated del Toro for his performance in Sicario and signed off by saying “see you on Guardians!”
For the moment, unless del Toro drops by the set for a visit, it doesn’t sound like that last bit will come to pass. That said, there’s always the possibility that he has been instructed to keep his involvement under wraps. Perhaps we’ll soon see set photos of del Toro captioned with “The Collector lives!”
Either way, you’ll be able to catch del Toro in Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: Episode VIII in the Summer of 2017. The actor has joined the cast of the follow-up to the highest-grossing film in U.S. history, and is rumored to be playing a new villain.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is set to hit theaters May 5, 2017, and stars Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, and Bradley Cooper.
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?