The late David Bowie will be remembered first and foremost for his music, but he was no slouch as an actor either.
Bowie had a knack for playing futuristic and/or otherworldly characters, and one of his more memorable roles was his turn as Jareth the Goblin King in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986). The bizarre and mind-bending fantasy film bombed at the box office but quickly became a cult classic and is now beloved by ’80s babies the world over.
And so, like all that is beloved these days, it’s getting a reboot.
According to THR a contemporary take on Labyrinth is already in the works and has tapped Guardians of the Galaxy co-writer Nicole Perlman to pen the script. If the words “too soon” come to mind, you’re not alone, but it seems likely that this was at least percolating before Bowie’s untimely passing.
For those that are unfamiliar with the original, here’s a brief synopsis courtesy of IMDb: “A selfish 16-year-old girl is given 13 hours to solve a labyrinth and rescue her baby brother when her wish for him to be taken away is granted by the Goblin King.”
The real problem with this project as we see it is that David Bowie is pretty much the first thing you think of when you think of Labyrinth. His performance as the Goblin King is the sort of thing that you just can’t recreate. It was everything that Bowie was himself: Charismatic, enigmatic, captivating, unique, et cetera, et cetera.
Fans can only hope that — with the The Jim Henson Co. involved in production — this reboot can capture the quirky and fantastical spirit of the original, which also starred Jennifer Connelly and Shelley Thompson.
Details are still scarce at this point and the film has yet to set a release date. We’ll keep you updated as information becomes available.
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?