A much-anticipated Game of Thrones showdown is days away, but there is no need to wait for the episode to air to get a look. Thanks to eight new photos, released by HBO on Wednesday, fans can preview season 6, episode 9, which is titled The Battle of the Bastards. If you’re not up to date on the series yet, be warned: Spoilers lie ahead.
For multiple weeks now, we’ve been watching Jon Snow (played by Kit Harington) gather allies to face off against the cruel Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon); now, that is exactly what these photos seem to show happening. Not surprisingly, the episode title has turned out to be just as significant as fans suspected. Episode 9 appears to bring us the epic battle we’ve been promised.
HBO is still keeping as much information close to the vest as possible. The premium network always provides very succinct episode synopses, but the one for episode 9 is even more so than usual. Instead of multiple plot points, we’re just given one, but it is an important one:
Terms of surrender are rejected and accepted.
Between the episode title, synopsis, and photos, we’re preparing for a brutal clash. The photos in particular indicate violence to come, with multiple battlefield shots showing the scale of the fight. The leaders, Snow and Bolton, both appear, each looking surprisingly cool and collected in light of the circumstances.
Jon’s half-sister and Ramsay’s ex-wife-slash-victim, Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), is shown as well, and she looks ready for the inevitable conflict. Meanwhile, Wun Wun (Ian Whyte), Tormund Giantsbane (Kristofer Hivju), and Davos Seaworth (Liam Cunningham) appear to be among the soldiers present. As ever, the stakes are high, and any of our favorite characters could meet their end.
We’ll see which side claims victory come Sunday when Game of Thrones season 6, episode 9 airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
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?