Whether you’re talking about Notorious, Straight Outta Compton, or the quasi-autobiographical 8 Mile, hip-hop has certainly produced some silver screen-worthy stories. That said, perhaps the most compelling one has yet to be told.
A Tupac Shakur biopic is currently in the works, and the first trailer for the film recently hit the interwebs. Entitled All Eyez on Me, the movie will look to chronicle the life and times of one of the hip-hop game’s most influential and controversial figures.
Just like Notorious, which cast the then unknown Jamal Woolard as slain rapper Biggie Smalls, this film has tasked a relative neophyte with its title role. Demetrius Shipp Jr. — whose only other acting gig was in the little-known TV movie #unlock’d — will be stepping into the shoes of Shakur, but only time will tell whether they’re a fit. If nothing else, he certainly does look the part. So much so that it’s actually sort of unsettling.
As the lives of Tupac and Biggie were tragically intertwined, the film will draw constant comparisons to Notorious. But while that film had an inexperienced lead actor, it had a big-time director in George Tillman Jr. and a solid supporting cast that included Angela Bassett and Derek Luke (Antwone Fisher).This film has a less prestigious roster surrounding its star but — if done well — could certainly put a few names on the map.
You can watch the minute-long trailer above. It features the voice of Danai Gurira (who plays Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur) in the background, and touches on the race and class politics that made Shakur a cultural lightning rod during his life. “This ain’t just about you,” she says. “Like all black men, you have a bull’s-eye on your back.”
All Eyez on Me hits theaters November 11.
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?