When it comes to big Hollywood projects, conventional wisdom says that secrets are nearly impossible to keep. We are so connected these days that even the tiniest leaks are heard ’round the world mere moments after they occur. But at least one major project managed to remain under lock and key through its entire development, according to CNN
Every year, San Diego’s Comic-Con International provides a veritable cornucopia of entertainment news but, these days, many of the major announcements at the show are revealed via rumors and leaks before the event even takes place. This wasn’t the case with the newly minted Blair Witch, a follow-up to the 1999 horror classic The Blair Witch Project.
The entire film was screened for the first time at the convention this past weekend, despite the fact that nobody seems to have known that such a sequel was even in the works. While Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) was the official sequel to the original, it received awful reviews and largely abandoned the found-footage style that made the first film such a sensation. That technique is back in this the third installment of the series, and many of those who attended the screening came away impressed — if not a little confused.
Apparently, attendees were informed that they would be seeing a film called The Woods, which wasn’t marketed as a Blair Witch film in any way, shape, or form.
The film’s plot centers around a young man’s (James Allen McCune) quest to find out what happened to his sister, who disappeared in the first film, and its production was reportedly so secretive that actors/actresses weren’t told of the Blair Witch connection until they were officially cast.
Lionsgate Films has also released a terrifying official trailer for the film, which does a good job of capturing the spirit of the original. You can check that out above. Just make sure you’re in a well-lit area and that all potential entryways are locked tight.
Blair Witch is due out in theaters September 16,.
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?