The AI-generated movie What’s Next opens a fresh debate over AI filmmaking

These days, practically every technology employs artificial intelligence in one way or another, from the hodgepodge summaries at the top of Google search results to email programs auto-summarizing incoming messages and offering to compose outgoing ones. In Hollywood, machine learning tools and generative AI have been folded together under the...

The making of Severance’s incredibly unsettling John Turturro melon head

If it weren’t for the absurdity and mind-numbing grind of the corporate world, we wouldn’t have Severance. Series creator Dan Erickson has often recounted the inspiration for the hit Apple TV Plus show, citing “a really bad office job” as the creative fuel for the show.We can also thank Erickson’s...

In its season 3 finale, The Wheel of Time is promising to go cosmic in season 4

The Wheel of Time season 3’s finale isn’t short on big moments. By the time the credits roll, series protagonist Rand al’Thor’s taken his biggest — and most ominous — step yet toward embracing his destiny as world savior/destroyer the Dragon Reborn. His self-appointed mentor, Moiraine Damodred, squares up for...

J.R.R. Tolkien was fine with leaving War of the Rohirrim’s story untold

For Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, screenwriter Philippa Boyens, Jackson, and Fran Walsh took on the task of translating three expansive novels into three live-action movies. With the anime movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Boyens and her co-writers took on a radically...