Warner Bros. is betting on the power of J.K. Rowling. The studio already has the famed Harry Potter author working on a sequel to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them — a spinoff film not due to open for another three months. Warner Bros. announced today that the project is in the works, and that the follow-up is slated for a 2018 theatrical release, with director David Yates to return.
The Fantastic Beasts sequel will again center on magizoologist Newt Scamander, a young man with a passion for unique and often very dangerous magical creatures. Set prior to the adventures of Harry Potter, the second film in the new series will look at what is described as “an increasingly dark time for the wizarding world” that tests the allegiances of Scamander and his friends. Rowling has been busy educating fans on the world outside of Hogwarts, so this will give her a chance to delve even deeper.
The Harry Potter franchise recently grew with the addition of a play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, keeping interest in the wizarding world high. Warner Bros. has struggled with its DC Extended Universe recently, so it is not altogether surprising to see the studio invest heavily in a franchise that has repeatedly turned out hits. What remains to be seen, however, is if Fantastic Beasts has the same magic.
The studio is turning to Harry Potter veterans, including Yates, who directed the final four films for the sequel. Although Yates only recently finished directing Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, he evidently hasn’t tired of Rowling’s wizarding world. He has teamed up yet again with a familiar group of producers: Rowling, David Heyman, Steve Kloves, and Lionel Wigram. Niel Blair, Rick Senat, and Danny Cohen are set to executive produce.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them launches the spinoff series on November 18, 2016, with its sequel following on November 16, 2018.
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?