Just when it looked like the BBC was throwing a bone to impatient Sherlock fans with the release of season 4’s first photo, Steven Moffat, one of the series creators, hit us with a dire warning: The beloved series could be coming to a fast end. The writer and producer suggested in an interview with the U.K.’s Telegraph that star Benedict Cumberbatch may be ready to move on.
“I don’t know how long we can keep it going,” he said. “I’m personally willing but I’m hardly the main draw.”
Moffat’s comments indicated Cumberbatch continues to play the quirky Sherlock Holmes for the fans rather than out of any real need to do so. There is certainly no denying that the actor has reached a point in his career where he could move on and have his pick of roles — he has been much in-demand in recent years, helped along by his critically acclaimed portrayal of the iconic detective. Fortunately, there is still a chance that he isn’t ready to take off his deerstalker.
It’s not entirely reassuring, but Moffat said he would be “moderately surprised” if season 4 was the last and admitted that this isn’t the first time he’s thought the series could be reaching its end. Since both Cumberbatch and his co-star Martin Freeman — who plays Holmes’ sidekick, Dr. Watson — became famous, Moffat has been expecting them to hang up their hats. Yet, “they’re coming back because they want to,” as he pointed out.
As a multi-part miniseries, Sherlock gives the actors freedom that the stars of many regular series don’t have. They have more time for other projects between seasons — as we’ve seen with Cumberbatch’s decision to headline Marvel’s upcoming Doctor Strange and Freeman’s turn as Lester Nygaard in FX’s Fargo, for example — and the show is less dependent on continuity. If they can have a Victorian special like The Abominable Bride, there’s no reason they can’t return to the show years down the road if they have to, as Moffat suggested.
In the meantime, little has been revealed about what to expect in Sherlock season 4. The new photo shows off Holmes with a bloodhound on the streets of London, so evidently, he’ll make a new friend of the four-legged variety. It still isn’t clear which of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories the season will tell, but whoever the villain is, he’ll be played by Toby Jones.
Sherlock season 4 is expected to premiere in 2017.
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?