The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is bringing back a familiar face once again: Samuel L. Jackson is joining the cast of Captain Marvel, Deadline reports. He is set to reprise his role as Avengers recruiter Nick Fury and will appear alongside his Kong: Skull Island co-star Brie Larson.
Jackson first took on his Marvel character for 2008’s Iron Man and has continued to play Fury frequently over the past decade. He returned for Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, and he even appeared in episodes of the TV series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Needless to say, Jackson is an MCU staple, so he seems perfect to help launch a new superhero tentpole.
Captain Marvel will be the first of Disney’s MCU films to be powered by a female superhero. In July 2016, Marvel made its official announcement that Larson would star in the flick as the titular heroine, also known as Carol Danvers. Her character is an Air Force pilot who develops superhuman powers. In the comics, she is actually the first Ms. Marvel, and her special abilities stem from a fusion of alien and human genes. Over the years, she has been associated with both the Avengers and the X-Men, and therefore it is fitting that Larson is expected to make her MCU debut in the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War.
Jackson is also part of the star-studded Infinity War cast, which is just one of the many projects he has done or has signed on for since his most recent Marvel film, Avengers: Age of Ultron. The actor has kept busy since, doing recent films like xXx: Return of Xander Cage, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and the documentary I Am Not Your Negro, among many others. It is a wonder he manages to fit so many Marvel films in, but fans should have no complaints.
Official confirmation of Jackson’s involvement in Captain Marvel is still to come, along with more insight on how Fury will be involved with Danvers’ story. Hopefully, that will come soon. There’s still time, though. Captain Marvel isn’t due out in theaters until March 8, 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?