The Star Wars franchise has a well-established history of familial plot twists and (spoiler alert) The Force Awakens’ Kylo/Solo/Leia situation suggests that this trend will continue into the new generation of films.
That said, fans who were left with questions about Rey’s ancestry will likely have them answered — but perhaps not until Star Wars: Episode IX drops in 2018.
According to ScreenCrush, director JJ Abrams was asked about Rey’s parentage at a recent Television Critics Association panel for his production company’s new Hulu series 11.22.63 and the Episode VII director responded in typically tight-lipped fashion, saying only that he knew who her parents were. Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow, on the other hand, was a bit more forthcoming.
On the question of Rey’s origins, Trevorrow told ET:
“We’re going to make sure that that answer is deeply and profoundly satisfying. Rey is a character that is important in this universe, not just in the context of The Force Awakens, but in the entire galaxy. She deserves it. We’ll make sure that that answer is something that feels like it was something that happened a long time ago, far away, and we’re just telling you what happened.”
We don’t want to speculate too much, but that certainly sounds like her parents/grandparents will be characters that we’re familiar with and are significant in the Star Wars universe. We’ll leave it to the reader to sort through the possible permutations but her abilities must have come from somewhere.
If you’re bummed about the prospect of waiting until 2019 for answers, know that it’s still possible that the big reveal will come in Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII. Just because Trevorrow teased the upcoming revelation, doesn’t mean that it will happen under his watch.
Either way, Star Wars is back in a big way, and there will be plenty to talk about in the next few years. Here’s a peek at the upcoming slate of projects set in George Lucas’ beloved sci-fi universe: Star Wars: Rogue One (December 16, 2016), Star Wars: Episode VIII (May 26, 2017), Untitled Han Solo Anthology Film (2018), Star Wars: Episode IX (2019).
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?