Tom Hardy seems to be everywhere these days. Not only has the actor inherited the role of Mad Max’s Max Rockantansky and had prominent roles in Christopher Nolan’s recent films, including the upcoming Dunkirk, but he is now about to join Sony Picture’s (re)rebooted Spider-Man franchise as one of the series’ most popular characters.
Hardy is in final negotiations to star as the titular villain (antihero?) of Sony’s upcoming Venom, which will be part of the studios reboot of the Spider-Man film franchise, which kicks off with Spider-Man: Homecoming. The announcement was made on Sony Picture’s official Twitter account, tweeting out a picture of Hardy rocking a Venom T-shirt. Along with the casting news, it has also been confirmed Ruben Fleischer (Santa Clarita Diet) is also in final talks to direct the film.
Tom Hardy is Eddie Brock in #Venom, the upcoming film from Sony’s Marvel Universe releasing October 5, 2018 – production starts this fall. pic.twitter.com/OZQqDEvoum
— Sony Pictures (@SonyPictures) May 19, 2017
While this marks Hardy’s first foray into the Marvel universe, he is no stranger to comic book villainy. The actor portrayed the muscled mercenary Bane in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, and his muscular build makes sense for the violence-prone brute, Venom.
It remains to be seen exactly which incarnation of Venom that Hardy will portray. The character was first introduced in 1988 as a symbiotic alien inhabiting the body of Eddie Brock and quickly became one of the most popular figures in Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery. Since then, the character has has a storied career in the comics villain, with the mantle passing to various other characters, inlcuding Peter Parker’s high school bully Flash Thompson. Venom has gone from villain, anti-hero, to full-blown hero and back, with turns as a special agent, and even recently holding a position on the Guardians of the Galaxy team. With such a varied well to draw from, we are excited to see where Hardy and Fleischer take the character.
Despite the character’s long history and popularity among comic book fans, Venom’s has had a less successful film career. The only appearance of the character came in the middling Spider-Man 3 directed by Sam Rami, with Topher Grace’s take on the character earning mixed reception from fans. Hopefully Sony learned from its past missteps and will be able to deliver a film worthy of the character’s legacy.
While further details about the upcoming film are sparse at best — include what other characters may show up in the film — Sony is aiming for an October 5, 2018 release, and production is slated to begin in fall, so it’s only a matter of time until we know more.
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?