Netflix hasn’t overlooked indie films as it expands into film distribution. Though the streaming service previously made headlines when it threw down serious cash for Brad Pitt’s War Machine, it has also been making plays in the indie game. Deadline reports that Netflix has been investing in new independent film projects and is keeping an eye out for more.
In its push to expand its presence in independent film distribution, Netflix acquired rights for three more upcoming feature films: an untitled electronic music project; Rebirth, a psychological thriller; and The Most Hated Woman In America. The projects will feature recognizable names, such as Modern Family‘s Sarah Hyland, The Good Wife‘s Graham Phillips, Melissa Leo of The Fighter, and Pitch Perfect 2 producers Max Handelman and Elizabeth Banks. The new acquisitions come after the company signed a four-movie deal with the Duplass brothers in January.
Working with independent filmmakers and producers, Netflix will distribute the finished products across its territories. Just how it will go about doing this, though, remains to be seen. Netflix recently made waves when it announced that several films it has set for release will be made available for streaming at the same time they open in theaters. Netflix hailed it as a way to offer “unprecedented choice” in a statement by Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos, but the decision was not popular with major theater chains, considering that one of the films is the high-profile sequel to the Academy Award winning Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. According to Deadline, two upcoming flicks by the Duplass brothers will be released in theaters 30 days before being added to Netflix’s streaming service, so distribution may vary from film to film.
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?