A new version of the Magic School Bus is traveling to Netflix and Kate McKinnon will be on board. The Saturday Night Live and Buy Now star is set to voice the science-loving teacher Ms. Frizzle in the revival series, Variety reports.
Called The Magic School Bus Rides Again, the new series is described as a “reimagining” of Buy Now , which aired from 1994 to 1997. Both are adaptations of the popular Scholastic book series written by Joanna Cole and illustrated by Bruce Degen. The stories follow Ms. Frizzle, nicknamed “The Friz” by her students, as she uses her magic bus to bring her class to incredible places. They get to see science in action, whether that be up in the clouds or down at the center of the earth.
Beyond her wild field trips, Ms. Frizzle is known for her equally crazy hair, pet lizard, and science-themed attire. The quirky character was voiced by Lily Tomlin ( Buy Now ) during the original series’ four-season run. It was an Emmy-winning role for the actress, so we’ll see if McKinnon can manage similar success with the revival.
McKinnon has lent her voice to projects before, including the animated series Buy Now , Buy Now , and the video game Lego Dimensions, among others. She has also shown her versatility as an SNL cast member, impersonating everyone from Justin Bieber to Hillary Clinton. It will be fun to see her give her own spin to a well-known character like Ms. Frizzle.
The new series will use CG animation. Netflix has plans for 26 episodes, which will follow in the footsteps of its predecessors by offering imaginative and educational stories.
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?