Anyone who has watched one of their favorite movies on cable is familiar with the sanitized versions of PG-13 and R-rated films that make the rounds on broadcast television. While some adults might bemoan the fact that their favorite scenes are often edited and omitted in these cuts, the idea is to shield the kiddies from inappropriate content.
Interestingly enough — unlike edited CDs and digital albums — there has historically been no officially sanctioned option for modified films. According to Yahoo, however, Sony is now rolling out its Clean Version initiative, which involves scrubbing certain popular films of mature content so they can be enjoyed by a “wider audience.”
There are currently 24 Clean Version titles available, with more on the way and the participating retailers include iTunes, Vudu, and FandangoNow — so it does not appear that the Clean Version is available with physical copies of DVDs. You can check out the full list of films here, but highlights include: Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, Step Brothers, and Captain Phillips.
Clean versions of these films are provided at no extra charge and are either bundled in with the original title or included in the “extras” section. Omitted material includes violence, explicit language, and sexually suggestive content.
Sony is hyping the inclusive initiative with the tagline: “You’re going to need a bigger couch,” as well as a promo video (embedded above) and a list of FAQs at cleanversionmovies.com.
While third-party companies have long been in the business of editing popular films for family-friendly viewing, technical snafus and legal challenges have complicated such efforts from the start. That said, this is good news for consumers. Parents get to introduce the kids to some of their favorite films and those without little ones can go ahead and watch them the way they were meant to be seen. Although, we would love to see what adjective replaces the expletive used to describe the Catalina Wine Mixer during in Step Brothers.
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?