The hit co-op adventure game Split Fiction is already headed for Hollywood with Sydney Sweeney in a starring role, according to Variety. Along with the Euphoria actor, the film adaptation welcomed Wicked’s Jon M. Chu as the project’s director and screenwriters Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, who worked on Deadpool & Wolverine. Sweeney will also reportedly be an executive producer for the Split Fiction movie. Split Fiction features two authors named Mio and Zoe who get trapped in fictional worlds they penned up. It’s still unknown which of the two Split Fiction protagonists Sweeney will portray.

Shortly after the video game’s release in March, Variety reported on a bidding war for a film adaptation of Split Fiction. Hazelight Studios, an indie video game developer out of Sweden, created the game that centers around split-screen combat and bounces between sci-fi and fantasy worlds. The game saw early success, selling two million copies in its first week, which may have led to the quick turnaround of a proposed Hollywood adaptation. It was picked up by Story Kitchen, a studio known for adaptations of franchises like Sonic the Hedgehog and Tomb Raider, but there’s no release window yet.

The Legend of Ochi feels like a film that shouldn't exist today. It's an original story, not an adaptation of an already popular book or comic. It's filled with complex puppetry and practical effects, something many films avoid because CG is simply easier to deal with. And it evokes some of the scarier children's films of the '80s and '90s, like the nightmare-inducing adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches.

According to Isaiah Saxon, the film's writer and director, it was a struggle to get The Legend of Ochi made. "The attempt to make the film took longer than the making of the film," he said in an interview on the Engadget Podcast. " I think it's extremely hard to reach kids with your first film because kids are kind of behind this kind of corporatized IP world now. But I really wanted to reach kids with my first film and, and so that's why it took so long."

Whenever he received a bit of funding for the film, Saxon says he used it to prototype creatures with London's John Nolan Studios, which has built animatronics for films like Jurassic World Dominion, as well as scouted locations in Romania. "And so, through the three-and-a-half years of this work before I got a green light [to make the film], I had then accrued this visual package that was kind of undeniable," he said. "That's when A24 finally just said, okay we're gonna be bold and risky and this isn't what anyone normally does, but we're gonna believe in you here."

The result is a film that feels incredibly personal and distinct. It centers on a young girl, Yuri (Helena Zengel), who is growing up in a tiny village on the island of Carpathia. There the people fear the Ochi, mysterious primates who live in the forests and attack farm animals. Her father Maxim (Willem Dafoe in another unhinged A24 film performance) is a conservative, overly-macho man who leads a band of boys to hunt Ochi. Oh yeah, and he occasionally wears Viking armor.

A24

The film begins with the Ochi, who from afar look like menacing monkeys. Yuri was raised to fear them, but after encountering one young Ochi, she begins to reject everything her father taught her. It also helps that the creature looks adorable, with large eyes and protruding ears, it's a bit like The Mandalorian's Grogu (AKA Baby Yoda), but with fur. The infant Ochi is also a complex puppet created by John Nolan Studios, and it looks uncanny at first, since these days we expect it to be computer generated. But it's clearly a physical object, with actual facial movements that Yuri can react to.

"Puppetry is such an ancient art form," Saxon said, when I asked why he pushed to make the Ochi a puppet and not a purely CG creature. "We've been making shadows on the cave wall for thousands of years, and our brain as we watch the human hand give life to a character is just fully accepting of it."

"And then there's also the charm of the failure space of puppetry. Even when you're not doing it just right, it feels alive. And especially for this baby primate, we found immediately as we were testing the puppet, that the little imperfections that came through rod puppeteering were actually exactly the way that a little baby monkey would be just discovering how to move their own body."

A24

Creating a believable puppet is just one problem though, another is orchestrating it effectively on a movie set. "[John Nolan Studios] pushed the limits of what you could do at a really small scale with animatronics," Saxon said. "We were able to prototype for years to build these creatures. And then on set, we have extensively rehearsed every single scene with all these puppeteers. There's five on the body led by Rob Tygner, who's doing the head, and he's kind of calling out the internal monologue of the animal — all its thinking, all its vocalization — so that everyone can sync."

Another two people control the puppet's face while staring at monitors, so there's a challenge to making them all work as one entity, Saxon says. The film's sets are also built to hold all of the people who control the Ochi puppet, and who often need to be hidden from view. And then there are the suit performers. "We have small people in ape suits with hand extensions with heavy animatronic heads that they can barely see out of. They're hot and they're out in the Carpathian wilderness in the mountains of Transylvania," Saxon said.

After seeing what he accomplished with The Legend of Ochi, it's not hard to see Disney tapping Saxon for something in the Marvel universe, like it has with so many independent filmmakers. But that likely won't happen. "I've already said no," Saxon remarked in regards to making a Marvel film, and he also has no desire to make anything based on an existing IP.

Saxon isn't entirely against using digital tools, despite his obvious love for puppetry. The Legend of Ochi still uses CG for distant shots of the Ochi, and for creating virtual sets. "I've also, over the years, learned CG and I've made purely animated 3D films. And I know the software myself and I know that it's a bespoke craft art that is tedious and full of love and attention to detail."

"It doesn't get the respect it deserves," he added. "And that's partly because there's been a kind of corporatization and overuse of CG a lot.” Saxon says he was well aware a CG character couldn’t carry the film, but he also knew that it was the best way to create a 3D river that didn’t exist in Romania. (It’s also reminiscent of the music video he directed for Bjork’s “Wanderlust.”)

"You have to look at each opportunity and come to the technique organically for the task. You can't have philosophies about this."

The classic movie 12 Angry Men is titled as such because, well, it's about a jury comprised of 12 men. But viewers have noticed recently that the image Amazon uses for the movie has more than 12 characters in it. Further, their melting, inhuman faces look like they could be somebody's sleep paralysis monsters. The terrifying quality to the characters' faces is just one of the elements indicating the use of AI to generate the image. Their deformed and claw-like hands are another, along with the other obvious AI artifacts in the photo. 

Upon checking, Amazon didn't use the AI-generated image for the Prime Video version of the classic film. Some viewers pointed out that one could only see the AI version of the film's poster on Freevee, Amazon's free ad-supported streaming service. According to AV Club, the company used a different poster on Freevee due to licensing issues. Apparently, Freevee got its license to stream 12 Angry Men from a third party, which also provided images for the film. It's not quite clear why the third party didn't provide any of the film's official posters for use, but Freevee is reportedly working to get the AI-generated one replaced. 

Viewers also previously called out Amazon for using what looked like AI images to tease its Fallout TV show. Seeing as the use of generative AI could potentially save companies money — and they are, as we all know, driven by profit — we may have to get used to seeing TV and film posters and marketing materials that range from odd to nightmare fuel and beyond.

Godzilla Minus One is now available to stream on Netflix, and the black-and-white version will soon follow. The streaming giant announced the surprise release today, coinciding with the film’s arrival for digital purchase and rental on VOD platforms including Prime Video and Apple TV, where both the color and “Minus Color” versions are available. On Netflix, Godzilla Minus One can be watched with subtitles or dubbed.

For anyone who didn’t get a chance to catch the black-and-white Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color when it briefly ran in theaters earlier this year, distributor Toho International said it’s coming to Netflix later this summer. Anyone else’s plans for a summer Godzilla marathon just get even better?

Godzilla Minus One, which is set in post-World War II Japan, quickly gained a lot of passionate fans when it was released in December 2023, becoming one of those movies that had people running back to theaters to see it again — and again, once the Minus Color version dropped. It received critical acclaim, and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects at the 2024 Oscars. 

The Tribeca Film Festival will debut five short films made by AI, as detailed by The Hollywood Reporter. The shorts will use OpenAI’s Sora model, which transforms text inputs into create video clips. This is the first time this type of technology will take center stage at the long-running film festival.

“Tribeca is rooted in the foundational belief that storytelling inspires change. Humans need stories to thrive and make sense of our wonderful and broken world,” said co-founder and CEO of Tribeca Enterprises Jane Rosenthal. Who better to chronicle our wonderful and broken world than some lines of code owned by a company that just dissolved its dedicated safety team to let CEO Sam Altman and other board members self-police everything?

The unnamed filmmakers were all given access to the Sora model, which isn’t yet available to the public, though they have to follow the terms of the agreements negotiated during the recent strikes as they pertain to AI. OpenAI’s COO, Brad Lightcap, says the feedback provided by these filmmakers will be used to “make Sora a better tool for all creatives.”

When we last covered Sora, it could only handle 60 seconds of video from a single prompt. If that’s still the case, these short films will make Quibi shows look like a Ken Burns documentary. The software also struggles with cause and effect and, well, that’s basically what a story is. However, all of these limitations come from the ancient days of February, and this tech tends to move quickly. Also, I assume there’s no rule against using prompts to create single scenes, which the filmmaker can string together to make a story.

We don’t have that long to find out if cold technology can accurately peer into our warm human hearts. The shorts will screen on June 15 and there’s a conversation with the various filmmakers immediately following the debut.

This follows a spate of agreements between OpenAI and various media companies. Vox Media, The Atlantic, News Corp, Dotdash Meredith and even Reddit have all struck deals with OpenAI to let the company train its models on their content. Meanwhile, Meta and Google are looking for similar partnerships with Hollywood film studios to train its models. It looks like we are going to get this “AI creates everything” future, whether we want it or not.

Challengers, the tennis movie starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor, is not the first movie you'd think of for visual effects. But the film uses them to a surprising extent: One shot in particular, a 24-second volley between two of the protagonists from the perspective of the ball, used extensive digital and practical effects, as VFX supervisor Brian Drewes explained on X. 

The live plates were shot with an Arri Alexa LF on a 30-foot technocrane during a period of five hours with stunt doubles, according to Drewes. 23 individual shots were stitched together to create the final sequence. 

"Highly detailed LiDAR and photogrammetry scans of the tennis court environment were captured to help create the final models. 100+ actors and background extras were also photoscanned to populate the stands of our CG environment," according to Drewes.

After that, CG was used to smooth camera motion and correct time of day changes. The stunt doubles' faces were then replaced "with a combination of full CG heads and additional photography," Drewes added. 

So why do all that? The sequence appears designed to convey the speed, chaos and passion in the sport, matching the movie's overall themes. It's also just a cool and exciting way to convey what would otherwise be a routine tennis match. 

Pixar is losing around 175 of its workers amid a Disney cost-cutting drive. It was reported as far back as January that layoffs were planned for the digital animation pioneer and the studio's headcount is being reduced by around 14 percent.

According to The Guardian, the downsizing is part of moves to scale back on development of original shows and movies for Disney+ as the company tries to make its streaming division more profitable. As such, Pixar is expected to once again focus entirely on making theatrical feature films.

Although it was once an ultra-reliable hit factory, Pixar has had a rough go of things over the last few years. Disney has suggested it was a mistake to have "trained" viewers to expect that Pixar movies will eventually come to Disney+ (where it debuted Soul, Luca and Turning Red after Covid-19 prompted theater closures). That may have played a role in Toy Story spin-off Lightyear failing to meet box office expectations. While last year’s Elemental became a word-of-mouth hit after a slow start, it ultimately earned far less than many of previous Pixar smashes.

Pixar will be hoping it can start to turn the corner next month when it releases Inside Out 2, the sequel to one of its very best films. Disney’s animated division as a whole is focusing more on franchises — Toy Story, Frozen, Zootopia and Moana sequels are all set to arrive over the next few years.

The rise and fall of MoviePass is one of those stories just begging for the documentary treatment and, well, HBO has got you covered. The platform just set a premiere date of May 29 for MoviePass, MovieCrash, a documentary helmed by filmmaker Muta’Ali and produced by none other than Mark Wahlberg.

The film chronicles the “meteoric rise and stranger-than-fiction implosion” of the movie ticket subscription platform, which originally set the world on fire when it first launched back in 2011. However, it wasn’t long before the company realized that the “all you can eat” approach that works so well with gyms and other membership clubs is a weird fit for movie theaters, particularly at the service’s low price point. In just eight years, the company went from the fastest growing subscription service since Spotify to total bankruptcy.

As the trailer shows, the documentary will feature interviews with many of the major players involved in the various stages of MoviePass. This includes original co-founder Stacy Spikes and former CEO Mitch Lowe. There will also be plenty of interviews with journalists who covered the service, FTC personnel and former subscribers. Incidentally, the trailer promises an anecdote in which a customer sent a box of feces to the MoviePass offices, and we don’t want to miss that.

Though premiering on HBO at 9PM ET on May 29, the documentary will also be available on-demand via Max. Director Muta’Ali has made a few good documentaries, including Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn and Cassius X: Becoming Ali.

As for MoviePass, well, it’s a long and complicated story. The app captured the hearts of theater-goers in 2011 by promising unlimited trips to the cinema for a single monthly subscription fee. The love affair didn’t last. The company ceased operations in 2019 and filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Between those dates, there have been reports of wire fraud, securities fraud and significant data breaches, among other outlandish scenarios. In short, it’s perfect fodder for a documentary.

MoviePass is actually still around. Co-founder Spikes recently bought the company’s assets, brought on new investors and re-launched the service. However, the updated pricing model is on the confusing side, with credits and tiers, and seems to have not captured lightning in a bottle for the second time.

Fans have been waiting a long, long time for another installment in the 28 Days Later franchise, and we now know when the next followup is coming out: June 20, 2025. Per Variety, Sony Pictures announced the release date for the upcoming film 28 Years Later on Friday. It would have been kind of cool if it were timed with the original film’s actual 28th anniversary in 2030, considering how close we are to that now (horrifying, I know), but I can't blame them for not keeping people hanging even longer.

28 Days Later, starring Cillian Murphy in what turned out to be his breakout role, came out in 2002, and was followed by a sequel with a different cast, 28 Weeks Later, in 2007. There were at one point murmurs of plans for 28 Months Later, but it looks like we’re skipping over that. The new film will be directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, who both helmed the first movie, The Hollywood Reporter reported earlier this year. Murphy will be among its executive producers, according to Variety, but don’t get your hopes up for seeing him in a starring role. As of now, it doesn't seem like that’ll be the case.

We don’t know anything about the plot yet, but 28 Years Later will reportedly star Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Ralph Fiennes. And it could be the first of three new movies in the franchise. According to THR, the plan is ultimately for a trilogy.

Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy came out right around the time movie studios decided everything needed to be a big franchise that exists in perpetuity. From that perspective, it’s a little surprising that Warner Bros. Discovery hasn’t milked Tolkien’s work more than they already have. That’ll change soon, though, as the company just announced that there are two new Lord of the Rings films in the works (you can read the full press release here).

The first is tentatively titled Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum, and it’s being directed by Andy Serkis — you may remember him for his landmark performance as Gollum in Jackson’s prior movies. The fact that Serkis is on board, and working from a script by Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (who co-wrote the prior Middle-earth movies along with Jackson) has me feeling a bit better about this not being simply a crass cash grab. Peter Jackson, along with Walsh and Boyens, are set to produce as well. Serkis previously served as second unit director on The Hobbit films and also directed 2022’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage.

Given the working title of the film, you won’t be surprised to learn that Serkis is also starring again as the titular Gollum. While part of me was interested to see how another actor might take on the character, Serkis so defined Gollum for the big screen that it’s almost impossible to put anyone else in the role. As for what the movie will cover, there’s no official word yet — but again, the title indicates it’ll take place between the events of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as Gandalf and Aragorn search Middle-earth for Gollum, trying to learn more about the ring that Bilbo and then Frodo possessed. 

Given Hollywood’s insatiable thirst for Content based on Popular Franchises, it’s a little surprising something like this didn’t happen sooner. Jackson and company followed up the original trilogy of films nine years later with the bloated and overly CGI-reliant film series based on The Hobbit and corresponding events from Tolkien’s LOTR appendices. And, of course, Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series debuted in 2022. And before The Hunt for Gollum arrives, we’ll see another intriguing project: an anime-style film called The War of the Rohirrim. That movie arrives this December and covers events in Rohan a few hundred years before The Lord of the Rings.

As a massive Lord of the Rings fan, I’m both skeptical and excited by this announcement. The sad reality of the entertainment world is that projects like this are going to happen no matter what; there’s too much money wrapped up in things like Lord of the Rings to not try and extract more. But Serkis seems like an excellent choice to direct this movie, and hopefully they’ll find a tight, self-contained story that works as a standalone film. The mess that was made in the Hobbit films has me wary, but even in those movies I found plenty of things to enjoy — and this feels like a good opportunity to chart a positive course forward for more movies in Middle-earth.