Books, films, music, video games — you would think that there’s no corner of the media universe that the Star Wars franchise has yet to conquer … but you’d be wrong. To date, there has never been a live-action Star Wars television series and, according to TV Line, that frontier will remain unexplored for the foreseeable future.
“They [Lucasfilm] are focused on their movies,” commented Paul Lee, president of the Disney-owned ABC network, adding that, “We don’t have any plans at the moment.” Disney, of course, also owns Lucasfilm, and an unnamed Lucasfilm rep added simply that, “Our current focus for TV is on animation.”
This wasn’t always the case, however, as George Lucas himself was once working on a live-action series.
Back in 2005, Star Wars: Underworld was in development, and the story of two families jostling for control of the scoundrel-filled underbelly of a galaxy far, far, away was being billed by Lucasfilm producer Rick McCallum as “Deadwood in space.” Apparently, producers were taking the idea seriously enough that 50 different scripts were produced for the show, many of them penned by esteemed and accomplished writers. But when Disney purchased Lucasfilm, priorities shifted and the film franchise took precedence.
Given the astronomical, record-breaking, money-printing success of The Force Awakens, it’s tough to argue with that decision in retrospect. An anonymous industry insider also told TV Line that not doing a series is “smart brand management” and added, “I imagine they’re looking to avoid the ‘Marvel-ization’ of the franchise.” Even JJ Abrams weighed in, saying, “since my TV deal is at [Warner Bros.], it is unlikely that [my production company] Bad Robot will be involved in any Star Wars television projects.”
Despite recent rumors that Netflix was talking to Disney about the possibility of a live-action series, it seems that the idea is very much on the back burner for now … if it’s even on the stove at all.
Looks like those anxiously awaiting more Star Wars will need to wait for Rogue One (December 16, 2016) or the recently delayed Episode VIII (December 15, 2017) to get their fix.
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?