Just a few weeks removed from the theatrical release of Ready Player One, Steven Spielberg is back on the horse, having committed to produce and direct a film adaptation of DC Comics’ Blackhawk, one of the longest-tenured comic characters.
Per Variety, the film, to be Spielberg’s first based on characters from a comic universe, will be a collaborative production between Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros., which was the lead studio for Ready Player One. Regular Spielberg collaborator David Koepp (Jurassic Park, War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) has been tabbed to write the film’s screenplay, while Spielberg will executive produce alongside Kristie Macosko Krieger and Sue Kroll.
For those unaware — to be fair, Blackhawk isn’t necessarily one of DC’s signature characters these days — is the leader of a team of ace pilots of various nationalities, assembled originally in August 1941 (more specifically, in Military Comics No. 1) and originally pitted against villains from the Axis powers, like most comic characters of the era. The Blackhawks are easily identifiable by their blue uniforms, complete with a black hawk emblazoned on the chest.
The character was actually created by Quality Comics before being purchased by DC in 1957. Many Blackhawk adventures culminated with battles against monstrous, fantastical war machines like the War Wheel. At the very least, that could make for some truly epic on-screen battles, considering the wealth of CG tech available today. Both Spielberg and Warner Bros. Picture Group chairman Toby Emmerich have expressed happiness with the finished Ready Player One and excitement for the prospects of Blackhawk.
However, it may be a while before we see any progress, as Spielberg is currently at work on the fifth Indiana Jones movie, with a new adaptation of West Side Story next in the pipeline — not to mention a potential biopic of legendary composer Leonard Bernstein. At 71 years old, Spielberg doesn’t appear to be anywhere near finished with his illustrious career, but we still hope everything goes smoothly because a Spielberg DC movie would be something to behold. Spielberg’s other recent directorial credits include The Post and The BFG.
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?