The coronavirus has shaken up Disney’s biggest franchises — and Star Wars is the latest to be affected.
Disney announced Thursday it would push back the releases of the next set of Star Wars movies as well as James Cameron’s Avatar sequel, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The live-action Mulan remake, which was originally supposed to release in March, has also been taken off its theatrical release calendar.
“Over the last few months, it’s become clear that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to how we release films during this global health crisis, and today that means pausing our release plans for Mulan as we assess how we can most effectively bring this film to audiences around the world,” a Disney spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement.
The next Star Wars flick, which was due to come out on December 16, 2022, will now be released over a year later on December 22, 2023, according to Disney. The next untitled film has also been bumped back from December 20, 2024, to December 19, 2025, while a third film that hasn’t been revealed was pushed from December 18, 2026, to December 17, 2027.
The Avatar sequel has been delayed to December 16, 2022; it was due to come out next December. In a post on Instagram, director James Cameron said “there is no one more disappointed about this delay than me.”
The reshuffling is the latest blow to the movie industry, which has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. Warner Bros. recently announced that Christopher Nolan’s next hotly anticipated blockbuster Tenet had also been delayed, with no new release date set. Tenet had been seen as a test case for Hollywood’s triumphant return to movie theaters, but with its delay, we’re likely to see other major blockbusters get pushed back or taken off the release schedule entirely.
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?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.