DC has yet to make it official, but James Watkins (Speak No Evil) is reportedly the studio’s pick to direct its new Clayface feature that’s being written by Mike Flanagan.
[hollywoodreporter.com]
While The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim wasn’t exactly worth a trek to the theater, you might want to check it out when it starts streaming on Max on February 28th.
Though this year’s Pokémon Day will be full of announcements about the franchise’s upcoming games, it will also feature the debut of Dragonite and the Postal Worker, a new animated short produced by CoMix Wave Films — the studio behind director Makoto Shinkai‘s Suzume, Weathering With You, and Your Name.
A new trailer for the short — out on YouTube February 27th 12 AM JST — makes it look like it’s going to be a gorgeous reminder that there’s more to the Pokémon world than battling.
Money was the obviously part of what convinced Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson to give Amazon complete creative control over the James Bond franchise after years of telling the studio to kick rocks. None of the involved parties have disclosed exactly how much cash it took to secure the deal, but Deadline is pretty sure 007 wound up costing Amazon a cool $1 billion — that’s in addition to the $8.5 billion Amazon already spent acquiring MGM.
You might not have been keeping up with the development of Marvel’s Nova, Strange Academy, and Terror, Inc. Disney Plus series, but Deadline reports that the studio is putting all three on hold as it rethinks which projects it wants to prioritize for the MCU’s future.
Peter Parker only had eyes for Pearl Pangan in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’s first season, but that might change when the show returns with a new version of Gwen Stacy in tow.
Over the next four years, Netflix plans to spend $1 billion dollars to energize the production of new films and series out of Mexico according to The Hollywood Reporter. The investment is nowhere near the $2.5 billion Netflix committed to South Korean productions a few years ago. And a time when the studio has come under fire for platforming questionable depictions of Mexico (see: Emilia Pérez), the move definitely feels like some strategic damage control.
[hollywoodreporter.com]
Though it might have seemed like OpenAI was on the ropes between its recent weirdness with Microsoft and the disruptive arrival of DeepSeek, CNBC reports that the firm behind ChatGPT now has 400 million weekly active users — up 100 million from last December. OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap attributed the 33% growth to, among other things, word of mouth:
”They see the utility of it. They see their friends using it. “There’s an overall effect of people really wanting these tools, and seeing that these tools are really valuable.”