World-class assassins all need a place to hang out, and in the world of John Wick, that place is a glitzy but clandestine hotel in a hyper-realistic version of Los Angeles. The Continental is a new television drama in the works for Starz, focusing on the inner workings of the criminal hideout and its inhabitants with an emphasis on the action and dry humor of the films.
Not only that, the Keanu Reeves character may even drop by from time to time, but he won’t star in the series, according to Deadline. “It’s unclear what Keanu’s role will be but certainly this show is not designed to have him in the lead,” said Starz CEO Chris Albrecht.
“I think you can expect to see him at some point on the series,” said Carmi Zlotnik of Starz. “That is part of the ongoing conversation.”
Reeves will also be an executive producer on the series, along with the production team from the two films. Chad Stahelski, who co-directed John Wick and directed John Wick: Chapter 2, will direct the premiere episode. Chris Collins (Sons of Anarchy, The Wire) be the showrunner and write the series.
The news was announced at the Television Critics Associations winter event, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “This series is truly unlike anything else on TV,” Albrecht said. “The Continental promises to include the thunderous fight sequences and intensely staged shootouts between professional assassins and their targets that fans have come to expect in the John Wick movie franchise, as well as introduce some new, darkly compelling characters who inhabit this underground world.”
A third John Wick film is due sometime in 2019. Rumors of a John Wick series have floated around for several years, but the acquisition of Lionsgate by Starz in 2016 certainly helped cement the deal.
Starz continues to ramp up its scripted television offerings, with The Continental joining series such as The Missing, Ash vs. Evil Dead, and Outlander. Ian McShane (Deadwood), who plays the proprietor of the Continental in the films, is currently appearing in another Starz series, American Gods. There’s no word yet on whether he’ll reprise his role in the new television series.
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?