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Deadpool star Ryan Reynolds in talks to travel to Mars for new film Life

After a hugely successful turn as Marvel's Deadpool, Ryan Reynolds star is rising so fast that he may leave Earth entirely. The actor is in talks to head to The Red Planet for 'Life,' a Mars mission-based sci-fi epic.

By now, you probably know that Deadpool is a huge box-office hit. Projected to net between $60 and $65 million during its opening weekend, the film more than doubled that estimate ($132.8 million) on its way to a slew of records including biggest R-rated opening weekend in history and biggest 20th Century Fox debut in history.

In light of its surprising and astronomical success, it’s safe to say you’ll be seeing the Merc With A Mouth on the big screen again soon — and the man behind the mask should reap the rewards as well.

According to Deadline, Ryan Reynolds is in talks to star in Life, a Mars mission-based epic about an expedition that finds intelligent life during its journey to The Red Planet. Daniel Espinosa — who directed the Reynolds-starring Safe House — is set to helm the project, and the script comes courtesy of Deadpool scribes Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. Rebecca Ferguson (Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation) is also attached, and is expected to play the female lead.

Given the familiar faces already on set, this project seems to make a lot of sense for Reynolds, especially in light of Matt Damon’s recent foray to the Red Planet, which earned that veteran thespian a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture — Comedy or Musical.  That said, the title of this project alone suggests that it will differ quite a bit from Ridley Scott’s The Martian, which portrayed the planet as a barren, lifeless desert.

While this news is certainly intriguing, it’s important to remember that Reynolds hasn’t signed on the dotted line just yet. We’ll keep you updated as information becomes available but, in the meantime, you can catch the actor in Deadpool (in theaters now) and in the upcoming Criminal, set for release on April 15, 2016.

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?