Variety reported in January that Joel and Ethan Coen were busy at work on their first-ever television show, an anthology series with a Western setting. Now, Netflix has announced that it has acquired the rights to the series, which will be titled The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
The Coens will produce Ballad through Annapurna Television and Mike Zoss Productions, their personal production company. The series will feature six episodes, each telling “a distinct story” on the American frontier, and star Tim Blake Nelson (O Brother, Where Art Thou) as the titular Buster Scruggs. Both Coens are attached in writing and directorial roles.
This won’t be the first time the Coen Brothers have tackled a Western story; both No Country for Old Men and their 2010 remake of True Grit fit that description, though only True Grit has a setting that can be described as “the frontier.” No details have been released about the show’s plot or characters, though Nelson’s casting in the lead role indicates that there should be a healthy helping of trademark Coen humor.
Several big names are also attached in some form or fashion, according to IMDB: James Franco (11.22.63), Zoe Kazan (The Big Sick), and Stephen Root (Boardwalk Empire), among others. Each of these actors is only credited for one episode; Variety’s initial report suggested that the series’ episodes would tie together somehow, but we don’t yet know how — or if that’s even true.
The Coens most recently directed Hail Caesar!, and wrote George Clooney’s upcoming thriller Suburbicon, for which the first trailer was recently released. The third season of Fargo — based upon the Coens’ 1996 film of the same name — aired earlier this year to critical acclaim. Last year, the iconic pair also signed on to write the screenplay for Fox’s Dark Web, based on Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
“The Coens are visionary directors, masterful storytellers, and colorful linguists. We are thrilled for Netflix to become home to the full range of their talents,” said Netflix’s Cindy Holland. Added the Coens in a joint statement, “We are streaming motherfuckers!” The Ballad of Buster Cohen will arrive sometime in 2018.
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?