A short time from now, in a living room close, close to you …
On the heels of its record-breaking theatrical run, Disney will release Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens on Digital HD and Disney Movies Anywhere on April 1, 2016, and on Blu-ray and DVD April 5, 2016. Target, Walmart, and Best Buy will all carry a Blu-ray Combo Pack and will also be offering exclusive, outlet-specific bonus features according to Deadline. A 3D home video version is forthcoming as well, due out sometime in 2016.
For those who have already seen the film, the release offers the chance to enjoy it from the comfort of your own couch, and for the half a dozen folks who haven’t: What’s wrong with you?! We kid, of course, but we do recommend giving it a whirl from the comfort of your home if you’re harboring any Star Wars nostalgia — or curiosity — whatsoever.
The news emerged from Disney’s shareholder meeting in Chicago, during which CEO Bob Iger also teased the upcoming spinoff film Star Wars: Rogue One, which is essentially the franchise’s version of a heist movie. “It’s our first original, standalone Star Wars story about a band of rebels planning to steal the plans for the Death Star,” Iger said. “The action takes place right before the events in the very first Star Wars movie: Episode IV.”
That film is due out December 16, 2016, while the Rian Johnson-directed Star Wars: Episode VIII is set for a December 15, 2017 release.
Given its already astronomical success, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that The Force Awakens will break records in the streaming and Blu-ray/DVD sales arenas as well, so we’ll be sure to keep an eye on the numbers for you. Either way — if you’re a fan of the franchise — there’s plenty to be excited about in the coming weeks/months.
Stay tuned, and may the force … well, you know.
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?