While 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman was met with a collective “meh” from audiences and critics alike, The Huntsman: Winter’s War looks like it has the potential to get this franchise pointed in the right direction. The sequel adds Emily Blunt (Freya/The Ice Queen) and Jessica Chastain (The Warrior/Sara) to the equation, returns Charlize Theron (Ravenna/The Evil Queen) fresh off of a head-turning performance as Imperator Furiosa, and brings back Chris Hemsworth as the eponymous Huntsman at the brightest stage of his burgeoning stardom.
Earlier today, Universal Pictures released the official trailer for the film and … it actually looks like a pretty good time. There’s more than enough action and eye candy to go around, and Blunt’s wicked and disembodied voice stitches the scenes together nicely, setting just the right tone. From what little we’ve seen, the actress seems to be a key addition as Theron’s comparably sinister younger sister.
This time around, Cedric Nicolas-Troyan will direct, replacing Snow White and the Huntsman helmer Rupert Sanders, while Kristen Stewart is out as Snow White, leading some to speculate that her well-publicized affair with Sanders was to blame.
Nothing was ever confirmed on that front, however, and we’re just glad to see that this film is shaping up to provide the sort of dark, stylish reimagining of a classic fairytale that its predecessor promised
While we’re not sure how we feel about the fact that this spot seems to be borrowing quite a bit from Disney’s Frozen, with Blunt conjuring up winter weather a la Princess Elsa, this film certainly looks intriguing enough to keep an eye on.
You can watch the full trailer above and you can catch The Huntsman: Winter’s War in theaters starting April 22, 2016.
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?