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Zack Snyder Will Make Army of the Dead 2 After Rebel Moon for Netflix
The Hollywood Reporter brings word of Snyder’s new expanded deal at Netflix, with confirmation straight from the horse’s mouth. Deborah said: “For us, it was so important to find a partnership that was based on mutual respect. The creative process works best when everybody trusts each other, and you can take chances and be creative. For us, we don’t usually play it safe. The content we make is a little bit edgier. And I think it’s important to have a good partnership and hear each other. And Netflix has given us a lot of freedom. But they’ve also embraced the idea of trying new things and not necessarily waiting for a success before moving ahead.”
Review: Snyder’s Zombie Movie, Army of the Dead, Needs a Bullet to the Brain
Army of the Dead is already on its way to become a franchise. A prequel film, Army of Thieves (centred on Matthias Schweighöfer’s Army of the Dead character Dieter) is due on Netflix later in 2021. There’s also the anime spin-off series, Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, which follows the Army of the Dead’s principal cast before the events of the film. Snyder will direct episodes of Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas, slated to premiere in early 2022 on Netflix. The streaming service will take that approach to Rebel Moon too, with sequels and series already being planned.
This might seem premature, but Netflix’s faith in Snyder seems to be paying off. Netflix revealed that Army of the Dead was watched by 75 million member households in the first 28 days after its release in May. That made Army of the Dead one of Netflix’s top 10 movies of all time, following Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction (99 million), Sandra Bullock-led Bird Box (89 million), Mark Wahlberg’s Spenser Confidential (85 million), Ryan Reynolds-led 6 Underground (83 million), Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston in Murder Mystery (83 million), Charlize Theron’s The Old Guard (78 million), Millie Bobby Brown-led Enola Holmes (76 million), and Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Project Power (75 million).
Army of the Dead 2 ‘Insane’ Idea Ready to Go, Zack Snyder Says
“I’ve known Zack and Deb for years and was fortunate to be part of Dawn of the Dead, his first film,” Netflix film chief Scott Stuber said in a prepared statement. “I have since had the privilege of watching his career grow and see the evolving impact of his work. To see him return to his roots with Army of the Dead, which is now one of our most popular films, and build a world out of these characters with the upcoming Army of Thieves and anime series, is amazing to see. We’ve only scratched the surface of what’s still to come and create with Zack, Deb, Wes and everyone at Stone Quarry.”
Before this Netflix deal, The Stone Quarry was previously set up at Warner Bros., where Snyder delivered the 2007 action epic 300, the 2009 superhero movie Watchmen, the 2010 animated fantasy Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, the 2011 fantasy action Sucker Punch, the 2013 Superman film Man of Steel, the 2016 follow-up Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and the 2017 mash-up Justice League, which was turned into Justice League Snyder Cut earlier this year for HBO Max. As part of the deal, Snyder also produced 300: Rise of an Empire, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman 1984.
“At Xbox, we believe that with better tools, creators can make even more extraordinary games,” Haiyan Zhang, GM, Xbox Gaming AI, said in a blog post. “This partnership will bring together: Inworld’s expertise in working with generative AI models for character development, Microsoft’s cutting-edge cloud-based AI solutions including Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Research’s technical insights into the future of play, and Team Xbox’s strengths in revolutionizing accessible and responsible creator tools for all developers.”
The aforementioned AI design copilot is a toolset that will help game designers turn prompts into scripts and dialogue trees. In contrast, the character runtime will enable dynamically generated plot beats and quests. We’ve already seen heavy AI integration in games by way of procedural generation — a more recent example being the 1000+ planets in Starfield. Not to mention, enemy AI has been around for way longer.
Inworld made headlines in August when it launched a modded story mode for Grand Theft Auto V, Sentient Streets, in which players had to investigate the rise of a bizarre AI-worshipping cult — a segment loaded with characters that spoke in AI-generated dialogue, on the fly. The mod was later taken down by publisher Take-Two, leaving a permanent strike on the creator Bloc’s YouTube channel. As per The Verge, Inworld’s AI technology can also be used for narration in top-down RPGs to warn players about any events awaiting off-screen and respond to questions like we’ve seen in the past year with AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bing Chat. Microsoft has also been heavily banking on artificial intelligence, having made a $10 billion (about Rs. 83,254 crore) investment in OpenAI. The company has also integrated AI tools into its popular suite of services and also added an AI copilot to Windows.
Despite being a Microsoft-affiliated AI toolset, it would be interesting to see whether titles using them will be allowed to thrive on other platforms. In July, Valve claimed that it would be cracking down on games that included AI-generated assets if the developer didn’t own the copyright to the piece of art. For the uninitiated, when you insert a prompt to create something in AI, the software simply repurposes existing assets found online and mushes them together — basically stealing from other artists and writers without appropriate commercial licenses. Infringing them would lead to the game not being distributed on Steam, forcing the developers to seek proper licenses for the asset by reaching out to the AI companies involved. It’s unclear how Microsoft’s partnership will play out — as long as AI content is being used as a catalyst to innovate and create something new, it should be fine.
In a post on X shared by BSNL’s Andhra Pradesh (@bsnl_ap_circle) unit, the company confirmed that BSNL users can upgrade their older 2G or 3G SIMs to a 4G SIM for free. Not only will the upgrade be free, but a promotional image shared with the post suggests that users who opt for the upgrade will also receive 4GB of free data that will be valid for three months. It is speculated that BSNL is aiming to boost its upcoming 4G services with this offer. The announcement was first spotted by Telecom Talk.
To access the free data offer and the free upgrade, BSNL users are requested to get in touch with executives at BSNL’s Customer Service Centre, franchisee or retailer stores, or contact one of their Direct Selling Agents (DSA). The promo image also adds in a finer print that the offer is available with certain terms and conditions, but hasn’t detailed any, so far.
Reliance’s Jio recently launched the 4G-supported Bharat B1 feature phone in India. The handset is priced at Rs. 1,299 in India. Alongside 4G connectivity, the phone comes with JioCinema and JioSaavn applications pre-installed.
The Jio Bharat B1 is equipped with the JioPay application, which is said to allow users to make UPI payments. Aiming to increase accessibility, the phone supports 23 languages overall, including multiple regional languages.
Realme, via Weibo, announced the arrival of the Realme GT 5 Pro in China. The display of the handset is confirmed to offer 3000 nits peak brightness. It has also been teased to offer heat dissipation with a surface area of around 10,000mm2. It is confirmed to ship with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. The post doesn’t specify the exact launch date of the smartphone, however, given the release of the teasers, the launch could be just around the corner.
The Realme GT 5 Pro has been in the news a lot lately. It is expected to feature a 6.78-inch (1,264×2,780 pixels) AMOLED display and is tipped to come in 8GB, 12GB, and 16GB RAM options along with 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB inbuilt storage options.
For optics, the Realme GT 5 Pro is said to have a triple rear camera unit comprising two 50-megapixel sensors and an 8-megapixel shooter at the rear. The camera setup might include a Sony LYTIA LYT808 sensor, an OmniVision OV08D10 secondary sensor, and a Sony IMX890 telephoto sensor. For selfies, there could be a 32-megapixel sensor at the front. It is said to carry a 5,400mAh battery with support for 100W wired charging and 50W wireless charging.
The Realme GT 5 Pro is expected to come with upgrades over Realme GT 5. The latter was launched in China in August with a price tag of CNY 2,999 for the base model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of storage.
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