In case you missed the memo, Finding Dory is making money — lots of it. The sequel to Pixar’s beloved 2003 film Finding Nemo has parlayed the popularity of its titular blue tang into big bucks and a slew of box-office records.
According to Entertainment Weekly, the film recently achieved another financial milestone, becoming the fastest animated movie in history to gross $300 million, taking just 12 days to reach the mark. The previous record holders were Shrek 2 and Toy Story 3, both of which needed 18 days to accomplish the same feat — almost a full week more than the behemoth that is Dory.
Only 10 other animated features have ever exceeded $300 million, so Finding Dory is truly in rarefied waters. That said, it’s Disney’s (parent company of Pixar) second film this year to eclipse the milestone. The other was Zootopia, which netted $340 million domestically and $1 billion (with a B) all told.
Though Dory has netted a less impressive $111 million thus far in international waters, the film has yet to make its debut in many major markets, including Mexico, Korea, Japan, the U.K., Italy, and Germany. Domestically, it’s already the 11th-highest grossing animated film of all time, and we wouldn’t be surprised if it someday knocks Shrek 2 ($441 million) out of the top spot.
Since earning $135 million in its opening weekend and breaking the domestic record for the biggest animated opening ever, Finding Dory has managed to keep up its momentum, but we’ll have to wait and see what sort of staying power the film has, and whether it can just keep cruisng past more records.
Finding Dory is currently in theaters and features the vocal talents of Ellen DeGeneres (Dory), Albert Brooks (Marlin), Ed O’Neill (Hank), and Ty Burrell (Bailey), among others.
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?