San Diego Comic-Con 2017 has already brought us a wealth of previews, teasers, surprise guests, and more. Fans of all types have been able to find something to get excited about, and now those who love the hit sci-fi series Westworld are getting their turn. HBO unveiled the trailer for the second season of Westworld during Comic-Con’s Hall H panel, and it has a fittingly gory opening.
We are treated with a glimpse of the familiar player piano, which has been known to play modern popular music at times, and this is no exception. As the gears turn and the mechanism is activated we see that the roll, which is set to the legendary Sammy Davis Jr.’s version of I’ve Gotta Be Me, has been spattered with blood.
Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) stares at the the body of a dead tiger, while Maeve (Thandi Newton) and Lee Sizemore (Simon Quarterman) come upon the corpses of his late coworkers. Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) and Teddy (James Mardsen) gun down fleeing guests, and we see that the Man in Black (Ed Harris) is not only alive and well, but seemingly looking forward to more carnage.
We also catch Bernard/Arnold riding in what appears to be a security vehicle, which is a reminder of the series’ tendency to seamlessly slip in and out of the past and present without immediately revealing that a time shift has taken place.
The Westworld panel was moderated by beatboxer, musician and actor Reggie Watts, reports ComingSoon. Executive producers Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy were also present, and joined by Harris, Wright, Marsden, Wood, Newton, and Quarterman, in addition to other cast members. Joining the panel were (Logan), Ingrid Bolsø Berdal (Armistice), Luke Hemsworth (Stubbs), Rodrigo Santoro (Hector), Angela Sarafyan (Clementine), Jimmi Simpson (William), Tessa Thompson (Charlotte), and Shannon Woodward (Elsie).
Westworld takes inspiration from the 1973 film of the same name, which was written and directed by the late bestselling novelist Michael Crichton. Entertainment Weekly reports that production of the new season just began this month. The series is set to return to HBO in 2018.
Check out our coverage of SDCC 2017 for the latest news and announcements.
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?