Fame is not the same for everyone, and Showtime has a new show intended to dramatize this. On August 8, the premium cable network announced it will be debuting White Famous — a new series starring Jamie Foxx and Saturday Night Live alum Jay Pharaoh — this fall.
White Famous is not too far of a departure from the two comedians’ real lives. In the upcoming series, Pharaoh plays an up-and-coming comedian named Floyd Mooney dealing with stardom and crossing over into being “white famous.” Foxx plays himself and meets up with Floyd after Pharaoh’s character was advised to meet with Foxx by Stu Beggs, played by Silicon Valley‘s Stephen Tobolowsky. Foxx and Pharaoh share a hilariously awkward exchange in the show’s first trailer when Pharaoh’s character has a sit down with the Ray actor while Foxx is wearing skirt.
The show was ordered by Showtime in January with Californication creator Tom Kapinos serving as writer, executive producer, and showrunner. The first season will consist of 10 episodes, and will be executive produced by Foxx. The series is based on real experiences Foxx has had on his rise to fame. “I came up from standup comedy, so to be able to share that aspect of my life on screen with a project like ‘White Famous’ is incredibly exciting,” Foxx said in a statement.
This will be Showtime’s second series about standup comedy that was executive produced by a comedian in the past year. Earlier this year, the Jim Carrey executive-produced I’m Dying Up Here debuted. The comedy is centered on a group of standup comedians trying to make it in 1970s Los Angeles. If Foxx is smart, he’ll make sure White Famous has a killer soundtrack like I’m Dying Up Here’s.
Showtime also announced the release date for new comedy SMILF, starring Mr. Robot‘s Frankie Shaw. Rosie O’Donnell will also star in the show, marking the first-ever recurring TV role for the 55-year-old-actress in her career. The show will be focused on Bridgette, played by Shaw, attempting to juggle her career with a dating life and her role as a single mother. SMILF is set to air on Showtime on Sunday, November 5 at 10 p.m.
White Famous is scheduled to debut on Showtime on Sunday, October 15 at 10 p.m. ET, following an episode from Ray Donovan‘s new season. It will move to 10:30 p.m. once SMILF debuts.
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?