The 2016 MTV Movie Awards gave us new looks at a few upcoming releases Sunday evening, and one of the most intriguing was Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ Kong: Skull Island, which has (somewhat quietly) assembled an all-star cast under the banner of one of the biggest names in the movie business.
MTV’s behind-the-scenes featurette provided us with our first look at the film, which has yet to release a teaser trailer, let alone a full-length one. The spot features Brie Larson (Weaver), Tom Hiddleston (Captain James Conrad), Corey Hawkins, and Jason Mitchell (Glen Mill) discussing the story behind the film and what makes this iteration of the iconic simian’s story different from its predecessors. The film follows a team of explorers as they delve into the heart of the perilous, prehistoric Skull Island, a place where there’s more than just one monster on the block. Says Hiddleston: “Kong appears in this film as you’ve never seen him before.”
The setting looks beautiful and prehistoric, the scale looks blockbuster-worthy, and the effects look seriously impressive, but the biggest takeaway from this spot is the short character bios that the actors and actresses provide. Here’s a quick rundown: James Conrad is a former British SAS officer who understands the jungle, an invaluable skill on Skull Island; Weaver is a photojournalist and peace activist who believes in conservation, symbiosis, etc.; and Glen Mill a wisecracking helicopter pilot who has his mettle tested by the ordeal and must build courage along the way. Considering we knew next to nothing about this project just a few days ago, that gives us plenty to chew on.
Rounding out the cast are a “troupe of A-list racehorses,” as Hiddleston calls them: They include John Goodman, Samuel L. Jackson, and John C. Reilly, among others.
Kong: Skull Island is set to hit theaters on March 10, 2017. Stay tuned and we’ll keep you updated as information becomes available.
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?