You know you’ve built a deep cinematic universe when you need a fictional news service to keep track of it all. WHIH Newsfront has been giving us the 411 on Tony Stark & Co. for a while now and, in advance of the release of Captain America: Civil War, the outlet has released the third in a series of viral videos meant to promote the film.
Like the other two, this latest spot features reporter Christine Everhart (Leslie Bibb) in the anchor role and The Daily Show’s Al Madrigal serves as a (serious) political correspondent named Will Adams. As reported by ComingSoon, the promo also features references to Ant-Man, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and other Marvel Cinematic Universe properties.
According to this segment, all the butt-kicking and name-taking being done by the Avengers comes with a price … a hefty price. The cost of the cleanup has sparked a debate about how much collateral damage superheroes should be allowed to incur while saving the universe, with Madrigal’s character pointing out that the alternative — the destruction of life as we know it — is not so attractive either.
Clearly, Marvel’s marketing team has taken great pains to make these reports as authentic as possible, and the addition of the news and stock tickers at the bottom are a very nice touch.
If you’re wondering where you’ve seen Everhart’s character before, the reporter had a dalliance with Tony Stark in Iron Man and also appeared briefly in Iron Man 2. There’s continuity in the White House, too, as President Ellis (William Sadler) is mentioned in the report, and also occupies the Oval Office in both Iron Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
You can check out the entire three-minute promo above, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see more “breaking news” from WHIH before Captain America: Civil War hits theaters on May 6.
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?