11/02/2023

Also, artificial intelligence could bring your next favorite movie to the big screen.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of The Monitor, WIREDs culture news roundup. Now that the holiday season is officially behind us, the Hollywood studios are back in action, making deals and making content. And for some extra help with that, it looks like Warner Bros. will start using machine learning and predictive data. Crazy, right? Let’s get you caught up.
As if the ascendance of Natalie Portmans Jane Foster as the new Thor and the return of Tessa Thompsons Valkyrie werent enough reason to be excited for Thor: Love and Thunder, now theres word a new actor may join the fray: Christian Bale. According to Collider, the one-time Dark Knight is in talks to join the next film, which will be directed by Thor: Ragnarok helmer Taika Waititi. No word yet on who Bale might playalthough folks already have theoriesbut if hes the Big Bad that could be pretty cool, no?
Have you ever watched a Warner Bros. picture and thought, “Man, a robot could’ve greenlit a better movie than that.”? Well, Warner Bros. is about to find out if you’re right. Kinda. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the studio is going to start using artificial intelligence to make decisions on which movies to greenlight. Under a new deal with a company called Cinelytic, Warners will use that company’s predictive analytics and data to aid in decisions about which movies to make and which movies to take a pass on. “The system can calculate in seconds what used to take days to assess by a human when it comes to general film package evaluation or a stars worth,” Cinelytic’s founder Tobias Queisser told THR, adding that that doesn’t mean machine learning will be taking over for studio execs any time soon. Artificial intelligence sounds scary. But right now, an AI cannot make any creative decisions. What it is good at is crunching numbers and breaking down huge data sets and showing patterns that would not be visible to humans. But for creative decision-making, you still need experience and gut instinct. OK, so maybe robots aren’t totally taking over Hollywood.
It has been :checks watch: over a decade since the original Avatar came outthats a long time! For those who loved James Camerons fantasy epic, the wait for a sequel has been arduous. Well, we have some good news! The films official Twitter account has released some new concept art for the movie, and it shows new parts of Pandora that the original Avatar never revealed. Soak it up now; Avatar 2 doesnt hit theaters until December 2021, and itll likely be a while before anyone sees a trailer.