If you’re seeing Nicolas Cage in your sleep, it’s probably because of images like this. Or maybe it’s because he’s racked up a list of acting credits that rivals even the near-ubiquitous Samuel L. Jackson. Either way, Hollywood’s most meme-able actor is in the news again. But this time, it’s not because of a new gig. Instead, Cage is making waves for the oh-so-beautiful disaster of a film that almost was.
Once upon a time, Cage was actually cast as … Superman. Yes. This man was almost the Man of Steel, Kal-El the Kryptonian, Clark Kent, etc. And as if that weren’t strange enough, consider that one of Hollywood’s most eccentric star directors, Tim Burton, was attached to direct. If you’re having trouble visualizing the sort of superhero that duo might produce, have no fear — there’s plenty of footage available.
Thanks to the documentary The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened?, we don’t need to speculate anymore. In the movie, Director Jon Schnepp undertakes a quest to find out what befell Burton’s famously unmade film, interviewing anyone and everyone that worked on the project.
The trailer above features — among other wacky images — Nic Cage in some sort of skin-tight, lycra-esque, suit that is equal parts monstrosity and electric blue masterpiece.
While we still wish that the original had made its way to the big screen, at least we now have a movie that we really want to see, about a movie that we really, really wanted to see.
You can argue about whether or not Superman Lives would have been a triumph of originality or a spectacular mess — after all, Burton’s Batman was a critically-acclaimed, paradigm shifting film in its own right. But you can’t deny that it would have been quite the sight to behold.
The Death of “Superman Lives” What Happened? is set to hit theaters on July 9 2015, so you’ll soon have a new perspective on one of the most interesting films that never was.
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?