Comic-Con International in San Diego is in the rearview mirror once again, but the annual celebration of all things geekery has provided another cornucopia of trailers, clips, and previews of some of the most-anticipated upcoming movies and television series.
Here are some of the biggest buzz-generating movie and TV previews from this year’s Comic-Con:
Lucasfilm didn’t bring a new trailer for The Force Awakens to Comic-Con, but it did bring a fantastic behind-the-scenes video that includes quite a bit of new footage from the film and showcases some of the new and familiar faces, places, and plot points that will be a big part of director J.J. Abrams’ long-awaited continuation of the Star Wars saga. Even without a new trailer, the Star Wars panel on Friday was one of the highlights of this year’s convention, proving the tremendously broad, generation-spanning appeal of the Star Wars universe.
The impending brawl between two of the comic world’s most famous superheroes continues to be one of the most-anticipated movie events of 2016. Warner Bros. stoked the fires with a new trailer that emphasized the threat posed by Superman and the reason why Batman is determined to bring the Man of Steel to his knees.
Last year, Mad Max: Fury Road was one of the sleeper hits of Comic-Con, and generated a ridiculous amount of buzz following the debut of its first trailer. This year, that distinction goes to the solo debut of the mouthy mercenary Deadpool, with an “R”-rated trailer that offered a pretty good idea of what we can expect from the upcoming film: intense action, non-stop (and self-aware) humor, and a lot of dialogue from Ryan Reynolds as the chatterbox antihero. 20th Century Fox refrained from releasing the trailer wide, so all we have are blurry audience recordings at this point — but even at that resolution (and in the hated vertical format), the movie looks like something special.
David Ayer’s supervillain team-up movie has been another polarizing project for Warner Bros., with issues surrounding the new Joker played by Jared Leto and various other concerns voiced by fans. However, the first preview of the film seemed to win over some skeptics, and offered the very first footage from a project that is certainly intriguing, to say the least. Not only did it provide the first taste of what to expect from this new version of Batman’s famous foe, but it set the tone for the film — which is apparently just as dark as the rest of WB’s comic-book movies so far (but rightly so, in this case). The studio opted not to release the trailer wide (which is seeming more and more naive every year), so all we have again is a version recorded by an audience member.
At various points over the last decade, it seemed like a revival of the Evil Dead franchise was always close to happening but cursed to never actually make it to the screen (big or small). Fans no longer need to worry, though, as the first trailer for the upcoming limited series Ash Vs. Evil Dead debuted at Comic-Con and assured anyone who still had doubts that the chainsaw-wielding, reluctant hero Ashley J. Williams is indeed back in action.
Filmmaker Guy Ritchie’s upcoming big-screen adaptation of the popular ’60s spy series The Man From U.N.C.L.E. generated some much-needed positive buzz with an extended trailer that premiered during the Warner Bros. panel over the weekend. While it was overshadowed a bit by Batman V. Superman, it nevertheless featured a convenient segue, with Superman himself — Henry Cavill — starring in the August 14 movie.
The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s comic-book projects have become a hot commodity in Hollywood, and the latest to make the leap from page to screen is Outcast. Set to debut on Cinemax, the series follows a man plagued by demonic possession for much of his life and his quest to finally end the supernatural curse that has prevented him from living a normal existence. The first episode was written by Kirkman himself, and the debut trailer for the series premiered over the weekend.
Warner Bros. teased the upcoming seasons of returning superhero series Arrow and The Flash along with the debut season of team-up series Legends of Tomorrow in a stylized trailer that juxtaposed the evolution of each television series’ characters against their comic-book counterparts. Both of the returning series are scheduled for October premieres, while Legends of Tomorrow is expected to debut mid-season.
Also debuting during Comic-Con was the first trailer for Damien, the upcoming television series that serves as a sequel to the 1976 horror film The Omen, about a young boy destined to become the Antichrist. There’s no release date set for the series, which will air on A&E network, but if the premise seems interesting, you might want to track down The Omen to prep for this one.
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?