The second season of USA Network’s breakout summer hit Mr. Robot will be directed entirely by Sam Esmail, the show’s creator. According to Variety, Esmail will sit in the director’s chair for all 10 episodes when the show begins shooting in New York next year.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Esmail said he expects season two will get “even darker” than the first. “I’m going to have to throw some jokes in,” Esmail told an audience at New York Comic-Con.
The decision indicates the creator will seek to assert more direct control over the show’s distinctive vision. Esmail directed three episodes of the first season, including the season finale. Esmail’s expanded role continues a recent trend of willful writer/producers taking over direction duty. Recent examples include The Knick‘s Steven Soderburgh and True Detective‘s Cary Fukunaga.
In the meantime, the show’s critical and popular success may soon lead to some award-show hardware. Mr. Robot received three Golden Globe nominations on Thursday for best TV drama and performances by stars Rami Malek (best actor in a TV drama) and Christian Slater (best supporting actor in a TV drama). Malek and Esmail have also received Screen Actor’s Guild and Writer’s Guild Award nominations, respectively.
“We are really happy that people are seeing the same things that we see in a show that we love so much,” USA president Chris McCumber told Variety. “The competition is so intense — there’s so many great shows deserving of recognition and of people’s time. It’s very hard to break through.”
McCumber also said the network will release an extended cut of first season, presumably next year, with additional “TV-MA rated” scenes.
USA has not yet announced a premiere date for season two of Mr. Robot. The first season began on June 24, 2015.
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?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.