Westworld, HBO’s sci-fi-meets-Western mashup, will return for a second season, as will two of its newest half-hour comedies, Insecure and Divorce, the premium cable channel confirmed on Monday.
The news of a second season of Westworld is unsurprising, given just how popular the show has become in such a short time — only seven episodes have aired to date. The internet abounds with podcasts, subreddits, message boards, and fan-related social media accounts all dedicated to dissecting the show and theorizing on its mystery-filled plot. According to HBO, Westworld has drawn an even larger viewership during its first season than even Game of Thrones or True Detective did in their debut seasons, reaching an average audience of 11.7 million viewers. With numbers like that, it’s no wonder fans will be getting a second season.
Despite the show’s impressive viewership numbers, Westworld fans will have wait a bit longer than usual to see the next season of the show. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Casey Bloys, HBO’s programming president, said that, because of its scope, a new season of Westworld would likely take showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy longer than usual to script and film, and that it’s probable the new season would not make it to air in 2017. The longer wait will give fans some extra time to continue digging and theorizing about what’s to come. Some of the shows earliest mysteries have already begun to pay off.
Given that HBO’s incarnation of Westworld has deviated from and expanded upon the original 1973 Michael Crichton film of the same name, it’s hard to say just what may come next, but hearing that the showrunners are going to be taking extra time to ensure the follow-up season has an epic scope is exciting.
Westworld airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Sundays on HBO.
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?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.