You simply haven’t seen pure joy until you’ve seen Chewbacca mom don her wookiee mask for the first time and laugh like nobody’s watching. Only, it seems that pretty much everyone is watching. So many people, in fact, that James Corden recently brought her on board for Carpool Karaoke — along with another, very special guest.
According to Deadline, JJ Abrams did a bit of backseat driving during Candace Payne’s appearance on The Late Late Show and even offered her a few pointers for capturing the essence of Chewbacca. At first, Corden was a bit miffed that Payne seemed more interested in playing with her new toy than in driving him to work, but he eventually relented and joined her (and Abrams) in donning the now-famous wookiee mask. Of course, everyone’s favorite infectious laugh quickly spread throughout the vehicle and soon the trio was in stitches, slapping their knees, clapping their hands, and holding their stomachs.
There’s so much to love about this segment, and it’s stuff like this that makes Star Wars the pop-culture phenomenon that it is. Almost every day, someone, somewhere does something we’ve never seen before with the story, one of its songs, or one of its characters.
The original video was broadcast on Facebook Live on Friday and immediately became the most successful video in the relatively short history of the platform. It has since racked up a startling 70 million-plus views and has spawned an endless array of remixes and imitations. If you have yet to see it, you can check it out below and, if you do, we want you to ask yourself the following question: Have I ever been that happy about anything?
If you’re anything like us, the answer might be no, but the video is a reminder to embrace the simple joys in life. With all the Sturm and Drang in the world today, we can all learn a little something about levity from the woman who will henceforth be known as Chewbacca mom.
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?