The year might be almost over, but Netflix still has more fresh content coming, including the sci-fi series Travelers. With just days until the show’s premiere, the streaming service unveiled the its official trailer Tuesday.
The show takes two elements that are common in science fiction — time travel and the end of the humanity — and gives them an interesting spin. Instead of characters physically transporting themselves through time, they send consciousness into the bodies of people in the past. Travelers‘ protagonists do this in the moment the hosts are about to die, all in the name of rewriting history and averting disaster.
The series’ time travelers are a team of survivors led by FBI Special Agent Grant MacLaren (Eric McCormack). Of course, as good sci-fi typically does, their actions raise larger philosophical questions as they take over hosts. Based on the preview, some of the survivors grapple with their actions — it’s not easy for them to watch potential hosts die and do nothing.
“I can’t keep pretending this is normal,” one of the men says.
Travelers also includes some action along the way. The members of the team are all clearly equipped to handle weapons, and they have to use them. “Don’t think the future doesn’t get its hands dirty,” we’re told at one point.
In addition to McCormack, who is known for starring in Will & Grace and, more recently, Perception, the cast includes Patrick Gilmore, McKenzie Porter, Nesta Cooper, Jared Abrahamson, and Reilly Dolman. The series was created by Brad Wright, who is known for his work on the Stargate TV series.
Travelers is currently airing in Canada on Showcase, and all 12 episodes will make their Netflix debut on December 23.
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?