Apparently, popes are very popular right now — at least among filmmakers. On the heels of HBO’s popular drama series The Young Pope, Netflix has announced an upcoming original movie titled The Pope, per Deadline. Unlike HBO’s series, The Pope will be a nonfiction film chronicling the transition between Pope Benedict XVI and current pontiff Pope Francis, the first pope to be born in the Americas.
Chameleonic Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce, who played the High Sparrow in Game of Thrones, will play Francis, while Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs) will portray Benedict. Fernando Meirelles (City of God) will direct from a script written by Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything). The film will explore Benedict’s resignation in 2013 — an extremely uncommon event that hadn’t occurred in 600 years — and the subsequent election that saw Francis elevated to the position.
As the Argentine Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio), Pryce will again be playing a religious leader — but one quite different from the nefarious High Sparrow.
The 79-year-old Hopkins will reprise his role as Odin in the forthcoming Thor: Ragnarok, due out November 3. He also plays the key role of Dr. Robert Ford in the hit HBO series Westworld. Meirelles works much more rarely — he hasn’t directed a full-length feature film since 2011’s 360 (which, as it happens, featured both Hopkins and Jude Law, who starred in The Young Pope).
The Pope, which is set to begin filming in November, will allow Netflix to continue to add to its already impressive catalog of original series and movies. Each month, the service builds up its library, ushering out the old and giving viewers new content. Despite the streaming giant’s seeming stranglehold on the industry, Netflix keeps on trying new things, like introducing “choose your own adventure”-style content for kids to enjoy.
Netflix is continually on the hunt for quality content, and The Pope is far from its only new project with big names attached. The platform recently acquired rights to the Coen brothers’ upcoming Western miniseries The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and also threw down some serious bucks in a recent deal to acquire three independent movies featuring such performers as Sarah Hyland (Modern Family) and Melissa Leo (The Fighter).
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.