Split Fiction has only been out for just over two weeks, but it’s already one of the breakout hits of 2025 with over 2 million copies sold. While it would be hard-pressed to recreate the success of Hazelight Studios’ previous game, It Takes Two, and sell 20 million copies, the company is already making ambitious plans to bring Split Fiction to the big screen.
Via Variety, Hazelight is reteaming with Story Kitchen — the production studio that helped option It Takes Two as a movie for Amazon MGM Studios — to adapt Split Fiction as a film. There isn’t a studio or a streaming service attached to the project yet, but Hazelight and Story Kitchen are reportedly already bringing together a director, screenwriters, and cast members as a package deal.
The rationale behind getting those pieces together early is that it will help sell Split Fiction to the major Hollywood executives. But it may not be necessary, as Variety reports that there will likely be a bidding war for the rights regardless of who is initially a part of the package deal.
Given the premise of the game, Split Fiction is an ideal project for two young actresses to play the leading characters, Zoe and Mio. In the story of the game, the two women are strangers to each other even though they are both aspiring authors. When Mio becomes suspicious about an experimental simulation that places each writer in their own stories, she accidentally becomes trapped with Zoe in a virtual program that was only meant for one person. In the aftermath, Mio and Zoe have to work together to escape the blended sci-fi and fantasy worlds that sprang forth from their respective imaginations.
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?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.