Dwayne Johnson has a calendar full of high-profile projects — from his HBO comedy, Ballers, to upcoming films like Fast 8 and the Baywatch movie — but he will be squeezing in time for YouTube videos as well. The Rock has launched a new YouTube channel to reach digital content-loving fans.
“The Internet is an awesomely cool and wonderfully deranged place and we’re fired up to have to fun!” wrote Johnson in a post on his Facebook page announcing the launch. He included a video to kick things off — a comical fictional adventure through the strange world of the video-sharing website. In it, he tried to “learn the art of thy Tube” with help from some of its biggest stars.
The channel will feature videos from Johnson and longtime manager Dany Garcia’s Seven Bucks Productions and Studio71 and tap into his audience in new ways. Johnson told Variety that YouTube is “a very cool space to play in,” especially given that it allows for real-time “feedback and response from [the channel’s] audience.” Johnson starred in his launch video, but viewers can expect unknown talent to be introduced as well.
The decision to launch the channel shows recognition of how big user-generated content has become in recent years. There’s proof in the launch video itself; Johnson’s co-stars — Lilly Singh (also known as Superwoman), Grace Helbig, Gigi Gorgeous, Roman Atwood, Flula Borg, Markiplier, King Bach, Laur DIY, and Alexx Wassabi — all gained popularity through their own videos.
With Johnson’s massive online following, it seems likely that his channel will generate buzz as well. “It always felt extremely natural for us to be vertically integrated,” said Garcia, according to Variety. Johnson’s legions of fans can “bring incredible leverage to the digital space,” she added.
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?