Starz has big plans for making “obsessable” content, and the premium network revealed some of them Monday. In addition to announcing the premiere dates of the second seasons of both Ash vs Evil Dead and Blunt Talk, Starz shared that it is developing three new series: Dirty Girls Social Club, Pussy Valley, and Teresa. The premium network is also currently working on a superhero series with 50 Cent, reports Variety.
The Ash vs Evil Dead and Blunt Talk announcement came during Starz’ Television Critics Association presentation Monday. The premium network revealed that the two series will premiere back-to-back on October 2. Ash vs Evil Dead will come first, starting at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The episode will be extended, which means that Blunt Talk will be pushed back to 8:35 p.m., according to Variety. It’s sure to be a night of blood, gore, and profanity.
While fans will be excited to see favorites return, there is clearly a lot more in the works. Starz has added a yearlong extension to its overall deal with Curtis Jackson (better known as 50 Cent). The deal now runs through September 2018 and has the rapper-slash-producer developing more projects for the premium network. Through the deal, 50 Cent currently serves as a producer on Power. The critically acclaimed Starz series is in the midst of its third season and has already been renewed for two more.
On top of his work on Power, 50 Cent is developing Tomorrow, Today, a superhero series based on a screenplay he wrote. The story centers on a veteran from Chicago’s South Side who ends up being experimented on by an unstable prison doctor. With his enhanced abilities, he ends up on the run but trying to do some good.
50 Cent promised fans a “big” series when he tweeted out a message after the news broke.
its Lit You know this is gonna be Big.We breaking records with POWER we gonna keep on going https://t.co/xMMrpDmVPv pic.twitter.com/FlSL1WnnOm
— 50cent (@50cent) August 1, 2016
The network’s other projects include Dirty Girls Social Club, which is based on a novel by Alisa Valdes. The series focuses on six women, friends since college, who are living and working in New York City. Meanwhile, Pussy Valley follows fictional pole dancers working in a club called the Pink Pony. Teresa, on the other hand, is based on a Mexican telenovela and centers on a young Latina trying to pursue money and power among Los Angeles’ elite.
Given how many streaming and subscription options are out there, streamers and premium networks have to be able to win over fans with quality content. With its upcoming series, Starz looks poised to keep doing just that.
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?