The quickest way to get your idea greenlighted in Hollywood is … well, to not have an idea at all. Rebooting classic shows and movies is the name of the game these days — after three different Spider-Mans and three different Hulks in the past 20 years, you’d think people might get bored, but apparently not.
Superhero flicks aren’t the only ones getting fresh coats of paint, either. The Weinstein Company has their eye on ultra-popular 1980s cop show Knight Rider, and is planning a comedic take on the show, in the same vein as Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s 21 Jump Street. Screenrant reported Tuesday that the studio hopes to snag WWE superstar John Cena to play Michael Knight (portrayed by David Hasselhoff in the original series) and comedian-slash-actor Kevin Hart to voice his car, KITT.
In recent years, Cena has followed the path set by The Rock — er, sorry, Dwayne Johnson — back in the early 2000s, splitting time between the wrestling ring and the silver screen. He’s appeared in both comedic roles (Trainwreck) and dramatic ones (The Wall). Earlier this month, he signed on to the Transformers spinoff Bumblebee, due out in December 2018.
The 16-time WWE champion is also a famed philanthropist, promoting slogans like “Rise Above Hate,” “Hustle, Loyalty, & Respect,” and “Never Give Up.” He holds the all-time record for wishes granted via the Make-A-Wish Foundation with more than 500.
Hart, meanwhile, rose to fame as a stand-up comedian before settling into his role as Hollywood’s go-to short guy, vacuuming up roles alongside badass co-stars like Johnson (Central Intelligence) and Ice Cube (Ride Along). He currently has the lead role in BET’s parody series Real Husbands of Hollywood.
If the movie actually gets made, it’ll be a minor miracle, considering the litany of failed Knight Rider reboots. A 2008 series on NBC crashed and burned after just one season, and a Justin Lin-helmed Machinima webseries failed to gain traction last year. Hell, even Hasselhoff himself approached Robert Rodriguez about producing a dark, Logan-inspired take on the franchise.
Given the show’s goofy concept (and the fact that talking cars are now commonplace), a Jump Street-style comedy seems like a good fit, with both Cena and Hart possessing serious funnyman chops. There’s no guarantee of success, however, as similar reboot projects like Baywatch (hi again, Rock!) and CHIPS failed to impress this year.
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?