It seems that Nicholas Hoult has been typecast as a “guy who likes to drive fast.” The Mad Max: Fury Road star will soon burn a substantial amount of rubber in yet another adrenaline-fueled cinematic ride.
The trailer for the upcoming Collide hit Yahoo Movies on Tuesday. In it, Hoult is fleeing a mob boss named Hagen (Anthony Hopkins) that he crossed while trying to fund his longtime girlfriend’s medical procedure. But here’s the twist: This high-speed chase takes places on the infamous Autobahn, Germany’s high-speed highway that — for the most part — allows drivers to travel as fast as their rusted metallic hearts desire. We imagine the elevator pitch for this one went something like this: “Imagine the movie Speed — but on the Autobahn.”
We’re not sure about Kingsley’s eccentric and deliberately over-the-top take on a crime boss, but damned if Anthony Hopkins doesn’t have the whole “chillingly terrifying villain” thing down pat. Combined with Hoult’s magnetism and the ’90s-style action plot, this could make for a fun popcorn flick. Of course, it could also make for a very forgettable one.
Director Eran Creevy is one for two thus far, with his 2008 debut, Shifty, garnering rave reviews, while his 2013 follow-up, Welcome to the Punch, mostly underwhelmed critics. For better or for worse, Collide will break the tie for this young helmer, but it’s the presence of another young star that makes this film intriguing.
Hoult has been a busy man of late and is currently filming Rebel in the Rye, in which he plays the famously reclusive author J.D. Salinger. He is, without a doubt, one of Hollywood’s most exciting young talents and it will be interesting to see if this is just a throwaway action flick, or if its strong cast can help give it some emotional gravitas.
Collide also stars Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything), Nadia Hilker (Allegiant), and Clemens Schick (Point Break). The film hits theaters August 19.
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?