Though Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma didn’t get a ton of screen time in Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens, the character had one of the more intriguing minor roles in the film. That said, many wondered whether Phasma would be returning for the Rian Johnson-directed Episode VIII — and it looks like those folks have their answer.
People caught up with the Game of Thrones actress on the red carpet before the 2016 Screen Actor’s Guild Awards and the she seemed all too eager to dish on her future with the Star Wars franchise.
Said Christie, “I will be in the next Star Wars movie. I think that’s an exclusive, actually.” The actress went on to describe how thrilled she was to be cast in the role of Captain Phasma, saying, “I was very over excited. I made no secret of the fact that I really campaigned for the part for a long time. And then I was delighted when J.J. Abrams wanted to have me in the film.”
Since Phasma was originally written as a male character, Christie said she felt her casting “encouraged diversity” and that she hoped it would “breed more of those kind of opportunities for other women.”
The character is expected to see an increased role in Episode VIII, so perhaps we’ll learn a bit more about the woman behind that snazzy, chrome-coated suit of armor. Back in December, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy told the LA Times “She [Phasma] is an important character, a baddie in the best sense of the word.”
Star Wars: Episode VIII was recently pushed back from its May 2017 release date, and is now expected to hit theaters on December 15, 2017.
Stay tuned for updates, and may the Force be with you.
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?