Deep-space sci-fi epics have garnered mixed results in recent years. It seems that for every Gravity, there is a Passengers and for every Interstellar, there is an After Earth. That said, the genre has a pretty intriguing film on the horizon, Ad Astra, which just got some pretty intriguing casting news.
According to Deadline, the upcoming space exploration epic starring Brad Pitt, will likely add another marquee actor in short order. Tommy Lee Jones is said to be in “final talks” to join the project, but before we talk about what his role might be, here’s a quick synopsis of the project from IMDB: “An Army Corps engineer searches across the galaxy for his father, who disappeared on a mission to find alien life 20 years ago.”
Word is, Jones will join as Pitt’s (Roy McBride) father — who took a one-way trip to Neptune and never returned — but nothing has been confirmed as of yet. James Gray, who recently worked with Pitt on the well-reviewed The Lost City of Z, is set to direct.
Jones has been pretty busy of late, appearing as CIA Director Robert Dewey in Jason Bourne, and Max Adams in Mechanic: Resurrection. While it’s fun to see him in popcorn-style action flicks, Jones certainly has the chops to take on much weightier roles. At this point, it’s unclear how much screen time this character will have (him being lost in space and all), but the film itself should have plenty of gravitas.
Apparently, it has something of a Heart of Darkness vibe. For those that slept through 11th grade English, that’s a Joseph Conrad novel in which an ambitious young adventurer journeys deep into the African Congo, in search of a legendary ivory trader named Kurtz. If that rings a bell, it’s because Apocalypse Now was partly based on the book and it will be interesting to see how the story translates into outer space.
For those wondering about the title of this film, it’s Latin for “to the stars.” Funny how something so epic and alluring sounds so ham-fistedly literal when translated.
Jones hasn’t signed on the dotted line just yet, but if and when he does, he’ll add this film to a slate that includes the just-completed Shock and Awe and Villa Capri. Ad Astra’s release date is still very much TBD, but we’ll update you as information becomes available. Stay tuned.
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?