There’s more to learn before Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them hits theaters. Since we’ll see protagonist Newt Scamander clash with the U.S. equivalent of the U.K.’s Ministry of Magic, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has put together an introduction to the Magical Congress of the United State of America, otherwise known as MACUSA.
Rowling’s latest magical history lesson came in the form of writing on Pottermore and a new featurette. The latter provides a quick rundown on MACUSA, and how it comes into play in the movie, using clips from Fantastic Beasts and commentary from Rowling herself. Meanwhile, her Pottermore piece offers a more in-depth primer.
Exploring the wizarding world in North America is something that Rowling has been wanting to do for a long time. “After the Potter books, this was always where I was interested in going,” she says in the featurette. “If I ever did anything, this is what I wanted to do.”
She didn’t skimp on details. Her history of MACUSA touches on everything from the government’s origins to the Salem witch trials to its original 12 Aurors. It turns out there’s a Potter on the list — a very distant relation of Harry. That family must have fighting dark magic in its DNA.
In Fantastic Beasts, MACUSA will matter because Scamander will walk right into the governing body’s path — or, more accurately, he’ll actually pop up right in the middle of the magical congress. That will lead to interesting conflict.
“Magic developed very differently in America,” Rowling says. “He gets caught up into a society he doesn’t understand.”
It probably doesn’t help that Scamander accidentally releases rare magical creatures in New York, either. As a magizoologist, he has been on a journey studying a variety of species, and he has some in his luggage that manage to get loose. Not surprisingly, most governments — especially ones trying to abide by a Statute of Secrecy — frown on this kind of thing.
Scamander’s adventures will unfold when Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them opens on November 18.
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?