Fast and Furious fans have spoken, and they have been heard. Executive producer and star Vin Diesel made a big announcement in a live Facebook video on Wednesday, October 25, revealing that Fast and Furious 9 will mark the return of two of the franchise’s key players: Director Justin Lin and original star Jordana Brewster (Mia Toretto). Diesel highlighted that, in getting both back, they were responding to their fans’ demands.
Lin last directed Fast & Furious 6, and prior to stepping away, he helmed four straight films. He has often been credited with reviving the franchise, and Diesel reiterated that sentiment. The actor called Lin one of the “forefathers of Fast” and “the one responsible for resurrecting this beautiful saga.”
As for Brewster, Diesel said that “there’s nobody more Toretto” than his longtime co-star and on-screen sister. Fans hated to see her go after her character’s heartbreaking last appearance in Furious 7. The death of star Paul Walker led to his character, Brian O’Conner, being retired, and along with him went Brewster, as Mia was married to Brian. It’s unclear how they’ll explain Mia’s return and Brian’s absence in Fast and Furious 9, but we’ll find out soon enough.
Both Lin and Brewster were on hand when Diesel announced their return on Wednesday. He filmed the video on the movie’s “kickass” set, and they both got to say hello to viewers. Not surprisingly, Brewster was the much more comfortable of the two in front of the camera. Whereas Lin simply waved and smiled, she shared her excitement and also spoke highly of the director.
“He breathed life into it,” she said of Lin’s impact on the franchise.
The franchise is headed into its “final chapters,” as Diesel pointed out. It is set to conclude with its 10th film, making the last two movies especially important to fans. Unfortunately, Diesel didn’t specifically state whether Lin and Brewster had signed on for just Fast and Furious 9 or if they were locked in for the final film as well, but he did give that impression. We do feel confident that they’re listening to fans, though, as Diesel made it clear they they are aiming to give fans the kind of ending they have been clamoring for.
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?