An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Multiple studies and investigations have found that about half of American households watch TV and movies with subtitles on, but only a relatively small portion of those include someone with a hearing disability. That's because of the trouble many people have understanding dialogue in modern viewing situations, and Netflix has now introduced a subtitles option to help.

The closed captioning we've all been using for years includes not only the words the people on-screen are saying, but additional information needed by the hard of hearing, including character names, music cues ("dramatic music intensifies") and sound effects ("loud explosion"). For those who just wanted to make sure they didn't miss a word here and there, the frequent descriptions of sound effects and music could be distracting. This new format omits those extras, just including the spoken words and nothing else -- even in the same language as the spoken dialogue. The feature will be available in new Netflix original programming, starting with the new season of You in multiple languages. Netflix says it's looking at bringing the option to older titles in the library (including those not produced by Netflix) in the future.

Traditional closed captions are still available, of course. Those are labeled "English CC" whereas this new option is simply labeled "English" (or whatever your preferred language is).

Films made with the help of AI will be able to win top awards at the Oscars, according to its organisers. From a report: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences issued new rules on Monday which said the use of AI and other digital tools would "neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination."

[...] The Academy said it would still consider human involvement when selecting its winners. The Academy said its new language around eligibility for films made using generative AI tools was recommended by its Science and Technology Council. Under further rule changes announced on Monday, Academy members must now watch all nominated films in each category in order to be able to take part in the final round of voting, which decides upon winners.

A new Star Wars movie — starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy — will be released in 2027, the two announced Friday at the "Star Wars Celebration" (a fan event in Japan). CNN reports: Set to begin production this fall, the movie will be set approximately five years after "Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker," released in 2019, but will sit outside the Skywalker story as a standalone film. "The film... is an entirely new adventure featuring all-new characters set in a period of time that has not been explored on screen," said a statement from Lucasfilm, the owner of the "Star Wars" franchise...

"The script is just so good, the story, it has so much adventure, so much heart and original character. It's an opportunity to shine the light into a side of the universe that we may not have seen," Gosling said. Levy, the director of "Deadpool & Wolverine," told the crowd the film would have all the "fun of 'Star Wars'" but it would be done "in ways that are new and original...."

The next movie in the franchise, "The Mandalorian & Grogu," a spin-off of "The Mandalorian" series, directed by Jon Favreau, will hit cinemas in May 2026.
USA Today notes that more new Star Wars movies have also been announced: Daisy Ridley is set to star in a film that will see her character, Rey, building a new Jedi Order after the events of "The Rise of Skywalker." [This is sometimes referred to as "Star Wars Episode X: New Jedi Order."]

"Logan" filmmaker James Mangold has also been tapped to direct a movie about the dawn of the Jedi, and [Dave] Filoni is directing one said to "close out the interconnected stories" told in the live-action Disney+ shows like "The Mandalorian."

Netflix's Q1 revenue rose to $10.5 billion, a 13% increase from last year, while net income grew to $2.9 billion. The company says it expects more growth in the coming months when it sees "the full quarter benefit from recent price changes and continued growth in membership and advertising revenue." The Verge reports: Netflix raised the prices across most of its plans in January, with its premium plan hitting $24.99 per month. It also increased the price of its Extra Member option -- its solution to password sharing -- to $8.99 per month. Though Netflix already rolled out the increase in the US, UK, and Argentina, the streamer now plans to do the same in France. This is the first quarter that Netflix didn't reveal how many subscribers it gained or lost. It decided to only report "major subscriber milestones" last year, as other streams of revenue continue to grow, like advertising, continue to grow. Netflix last reported having 300 million global subscribers in January.

During an earnings call on Thursday, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said the company expects to "roughly double" advertising revenue in 2025. The company launched its own advertising technology platform earlier this month. There are some changes coming to Netflix, too, as Peters confirmed that its homepage redesign for its TV app will roll out "later this year." He also hinted at adding an "interactive" search feature using "generative technologies," which sounds a lot like the AI feature Bloomberg reported on last week. Further reading:Netflix CEO Counters Cameron's AI Cost-Cutting Vision: 'Make Movies 10% Better'

Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos pushed back on director James Cameron's recent assertion that AI could slash film production costs by half, arguing instead for quality improvements over cost reduction during Netflix's first-quarter earnings call Thursday. "I read the article too about what Jim Cameron said about making movies 50% cheaper," Sarandos said. "I remain convinced that there's an even bigger opportunity to make movies 10% better."

Sarandos pointed to Netflix's current AI implementations in set references, pre-visualization, VFX sequence preparation, and shot planning. He said AI-powered tools have democratized high-end visual effects that were once exclusive to big-budget productions. The executive cited 2019's "The Irishman" as a benchmark, noting its "very cutting-edge, very expensive de-aging technology that still had massive limitations." In contrast, he referenced cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto's directorial debut "Pedro Paramo," which employed AI-powered de-aging at "a fraction" of The Irishman's cost. "The entire budget of the film was about what the VFX cost on The Irishman," Sarandos explained. "Same creator using new tools, better tools, to do what was impossible five years ago."

Director James Cameron argues that blockbuster filmmaking can only survive if the industry finds ways to "cut the cost of [VFX] in half," with AI potentially offering solutions that don't eliminate jobs.

"If we want to continue to see the kinds of movies that I've always loved and that I like to make -- 'Dune,' 'Dune: Part Two,' or one of my films or big effects-heavy, CG-heavy films -- we've got to figure out how to cut the cost of that in half," Cameron said.

Rather than staff reductions, Cameron envisions AI accelerating VFX workflows: "That's about doubling their speed to completion on a given shot, so your cadence is faster and your throughput cycle is faster, and artists get to move on and do other cool things."

Hours after Donald Trump imposed record 125% tariffs on Chinese products entering the US, China has announced it will further curb the number of US films allowed to screen in the country. From a report: "The wrong action of the US government to abuse tariffs on China will inevitably further reduce the domestic audience's favourability towards American films," the China Film Administration said in a statement on Thursday. "We will follow the market rules, respect the audience's choice, and moderately reduce the number of American films imported."

The move mirrors the potential countermeasure suggested by two influential Chinese bloggers earlier in the week, warning that "China has plenty of tools for retaliation." Both Liu Hong, a senior editor at Xinhuanet, the website of the state-run Xinhua news agency, as well as Ren Yi, the grandson of former Guangdong party chief Ren Zhongyi, posted an identical proposal involving a heavy reduction on the import of US movies and further investigation of the intellectual property benefits of American companies operating in China. China is the world's second largest film market after the US.

Meta is partnering with Blumhouse to launch "Movie Mate" technology that encourages moviegoers to use their phones during theatrical screenings, beginning with an April 30 showing of "Megan" at Blumhouse's "Halfway to Halloween Film Festival." According to Variety, the system enables viewers to chat with a Megan-themed AI chatbot, answer trivia questions, and access behind-the-scenes information while watching the film in theaters.

It was already the best-selling videogame of all time, notes the Hollywood Reporter. And A Minecraft Movie just had the biggest opening ever for a video game movie adaptation. WIth a production budget of $150 million, it earned in $157 million in just its first weekend in the U.S., with a worldwide total of $301 million.

A Warner Bros. executive called the movie "lightning in a bottle," while the head of co-producer Legendary Pictures acknowledged the game is a global phenomon, according to the article. (About the movie's performance, the executive "said the opening is a both a reflection of the mandate to celebrate the world of Minecraft in a joyful way, and the singular experience that only theatrical can offer."

But an unfinished version leaked online before the movie was even released, reports Variety Screenshots and footage from the fantasy adventure were being shared widely on social media platforms this week, and were also available on file sharing sites. The images and scenes have uncompleted visual effects. Most of the footage was quickly taken down by the rights holders. Although pirated footage is a common problem for major film releases, it's rare to have a working print leak online in this way, raising questions about how such an early version of the movie was accessed, stolen and then shared.

This October will see the release of a film that's nearly 43 years in the making, reports Ars Technica: It's difficult to underestimate the massive influence that Disney's 1982 cult science fiction film, TRON, had on both the film industry — thanks to combining live action with what were then groundbreaking visual effects rife with computer-generated imagery — and on nerd culture at large. Over the ensuing decades there has been one sequel, an animated TV series, a comic book miniseries, video games, and theme park attractions, all modeled on director Steve Lisberg's original fictional world.

Now we're getting a third installment in the film franchise: TRON: Ares, directed by Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil), that serves as a standalone sequel to 2010's TRON: Legacy. Disney just released the first trailer and poster art, and while the footage is short on plot, it's got the show-stopping visuals we've come to expect from all things TRON.
The film's director says it "builds upon the legacy of cutting-edge design, technology and storytelling, according to an official statement from Disney. And here's how they describe the plot. "TRON: Ares follows a highly sophisticated Program, Ares, who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind's first encounter with A.I. beings."

Share your thoughts in the comments. (Anyone remember playing the Tron videogame?)

The first episode of 2012's animated Tron: Uprising is available on the Disney XD YouTube channel...

"The third James Bond novel was published on this day in 1955," writes long-time Slashdot reader sandbagger. Film buff Christian Petrozza shares some history: In 1979, the market was hot amid the studios to make the next big space opera. Star Wars blew up the box office in 1977 with Alien soon following and while audiences eagerly awaited the next installment of George Lucas' The Empire Strikes Back, Hollywood was buzzing with spacesuits, lasers, and ships that cruised the stars. Politically, the Cold War between the United States and Russia was still a hot topic, with the James Bond franchise fanning the flames in the media entertainment sector. Moon missions had just finished their run in the early 70s and the space race was still generationally fresh. With all this in mind, as well as the successful run of Roger Moore's fun and campy Bond, the time seemed ripe to boldly take the globe-trotting Bond where no spy has gone before.

Thus, 1979's Moonraker blasted off to theatres, full of chrome space-suits, laser guns, and jetpacks, the franchise went full-boar science fiction to keep up with the Joneses of current Hollywood's hottest genre. The film was a commercial smash hit, grossing 210 million worldwide. Despite some mixed reviews from critics, audiences seemed jazzed about seeing James Bond in space.

When it comes to adaptations of the novella that Ian Fleming wrote of the same name, Moonraker couldn't be farther from its source material, and may as well be renamed completely to avoid any association... Ian Fleming's original Moonraker was more of a post-war commentary on the domestic fears of modern weapons being turned on Europe by enemies who were hired for science by newer foes. With Nazi scientists being hired by both the U.S. and Russia to build weapons of mass destruction after World War II, this was less of a Sci-Fi and much more of a cautionary tale.
They argue that filming a new version of Moonraker could "find a happy medium between the glamor and the grit of the James Bond franchise..."

An anonymous reader shares a report: The post-Covid rebound of live events is all the more evidence that movie theaters are never coming back, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told Semafor in an interview at the Paley Center for Media Friday.

"Nearly every live thing has come back screaming," Sarandos said. "Broadway's breaking records right now, sporting events, concerts, all those things that we couldn't do during COVID are all back and bigger than ever. The theatrical box office is down 40 to 50% from pre-COVID, and this year is down 8% already, so the trend is not reversing. You've gotta look at that and say, 'What is the consumer trying to tell you?'"

Fake movie trailers created with AI are proliferating across YouTube, with some garnering more views than official studio releases -- and Hollywood studios are quietly profiting from the phenomenon rather than shutting it down. Instead of enforcing copyright on these unauthorized videos, Warner Bros. Discovery, Sony Pictures, and Paramount are claiming monetization rights, directing ad revenue from fake trailers for films like "Superman" and "Gladiator II" into studio coffers, according to a Deadline investigation published Friday.

YouTube channels like Screen Culture, which has amassed 1.4 billion views, merge official footage with AI-generated imagery to create convincing trailer mockups that frequently rank higher in search results than legitimate studio releases. "Monetizing unauthorized, unwanted, and subpar uses of human-centered IP is a race to the bottom," SAG-AFTRA told Deadline, condemning studios for profiting from content that exploits performers without permission.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: It's only been a day since ChatGPT's new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Spirited Away." In the last 24 hours, we've seen AI-generated images representing Studio Ghibli versions of Elon Musk, "The Lord of the Rings", and President Donald Trump. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman even seems to have made his new profile picture a Studio Ghibli-style image, presumably made with GPT-4o's native image generator. Users seem to be uploading existing images and pictures into ChatGPT and asking the chatbot to re-create it in new styles.

OpenAI's latest update comes on the heels of Google's release of a similar AI image feature in its Gemini Flash model, which also sparked a viral moment earlier in March when people used it to remove watermarks from images. OpenAI's and Google's latest tools make it easier than ever to re-create the styles of copyrighted works -- simply by typing a text prompt. Together, these new AI image features seem to reignite concerns at the core of several lawsuits against generative AI model developers. If these companies are training on copyrighted works, are they violating copyright law?

According to Evan Brown, an intellectual property lawyer at the law firm Neal & McDevitt, products like GPT-4o's native image generator operate in a legal gray area today. Style is not explicitly protected by copyright, according to Brown, meaning OpenAI does not appear to be breaking the law simply by generating images that look like Studio Ghibli movies. However, Brown says it's plausible that OpenAI achieved this likeness by training its model on millions of frames from Ghibli's films. Even if that was the case, several courts are still deciding whether training AI models on copyrighted works falls under fair use protections. "I think this raises the same question that we've been asking ourselves for a couple years now," said Brown in an interview. "What are the copyright infringement implications of going out, crawling the web, and copying into these databases?"

Streaming service provider Plex announced Wednesday its first price increase in a decade for its premium Plex Pass subscription, raising monthly rates to $6.99 from $4.99, yearly subscriptions to $69.99 from $39.99, and lifetime access to $249.99 from $119.99, effective April 29. The company is also making remote playback of personal media a paid feature, introducing a Remote Watch Pass subscription at $1.99 monthly or $19.99 annually for users who don't need full Plex Pass features, and removing its one-time mobile activation fee.

The price increase applies to new and existing subscriptions, with the exception of existing Lifetime Plex Pass holders, the company said.

Despite spending hundreds of millions on blockbuster films, Netflix continues to churn out critically panned big-budget fare with its latest $300 million flop, "The Electric State," starring Chris Pratt and Millie Bobby Brown. While the streaming giant has produced acclaimed films by giving talented directors creative freedom -- resulting in successes like "The Irishman," "Marriage Story" and "The Power of the Dog" -- it has repeatedly failed to create genuinely compelling blockbusters despite attracting major talent and pouring massive resources into productions like "Red Notice," "The Gray Man" and now "The Electric State."

These expensive Netflix "mockbusters" lack the overwhelming sensations that theatrical blockbusters deliver, instead feeling like glorified content designed primarily for home viewing. The Russo brothers' "Electric State," with its drab visuals and lifeless performances, exemplifies how Netflix's biggest productions feel infused with the knowledge they're merely "content first."

A new statistical analysis has identified the films audiences "love to hate," with Battlefield Earth, Morbius, Grease 2, and Cats topping the list of cinema's most detested productions. The study, published by data analyst Daniel Parris, examined review data from MovieLens to calculate both the percentage of one-star reviews and total disapproval magnitude for each release.

A common thread among these widely derided titles: many were adaptations of popular books or shows, or attempted to capitalize on once-beloved franchises. Adam Sandler leads the actors most frequently appearing in widely disliked films, followed by comedians and action stars who have starred in productions with high one-star review rates.

The research also reveals an industry trend toward increasing one-star reviews over time, with family-oriented fare and horror films receiving disproportionately negative ratings despite consistent box office profitability - suggesting studios have prioritized risk-averse, commercially viable projects over critical acclaim.

Nominated for 10 Oscars, The Brutalist (directed and produced by Brady Corbet) has an "intriguing and controversial technical feature," according to the Baffler, that threatens to turn movie-viewing into "a drab appreciation of machine-managed flawlessness, and acting less interesting..." In January, the film's editor Dávid Jancsó revealed that he and Corbet used tools from AI speech software company Respeecher to make the Hungarian-language dialogue spoken by Adrien Brody (who plays the protagonist, Hungarian émigré architect László Tóth) and Felicity Jones (who plays Tóth's wife Erzsébet) sound more Hungarian. In response to the ensuing backlash, Corbet clarified that the actors worked "for months" with a dialect coach to perfect their accents; AI was used "in Hungarian language dialogue editing only, specifically to refine certain vowels and letters for accuracy...." Defenders of this slimy deception claim the use of AI in film is no different than CGI or automated dialogue replacement, tools commonly deployed in the editing suite for picture and audio enhancement. But CGI and ADR don't tamper with the substance of a performance, which is what's at issue here....

AI seems poised to decimate the voice acting industry; how long will it be before filmmakers give up on the whole time-wasting business of dialect coaching and language research and toss their performers' untrained vocalizations directly into the linguistic Instant Pot...? "Adrien and Felicity's performances are completely their own," Corbet has argued. Only, they're not. Brody and Jones's performances may now be authentic to spoken Hungarian, but they're no longer authentic to themselves: at least in the parts of the film with Hungarian dialogue, the acting stands more as a monument to the prowess of the voice-matching software than that of the actors...

AI is a different beast from color film, or the Louma crane, or the hand-held camera: it's steroidal, aesthetically corrupting, and unlike these earlier advances it confronts the filmmaker with real ethical questions... Use implies complicity. To incorporate AI into the production of art today, no matter how sparingly or subtly, is to endorse Silicon Valley's politics and worldview: its exploitation of both producers and "users," its blithe indifference to the social impact of post-automation layoffs and the environmental assault of industrial data processing, its cramped and uninteresting idea of imagination, its petrification of creation. It's a vote for the assholes...
In short, the essays calls this "recourse to corrective AI" a "filmmaking prosthesis that cheats the viewer and cheapens the performances." And ironically this clashes with the film's depiction of a "principled artist," according to the article. ("Some of the 'retro' digital renderings in the memorial video included in this scene were also, Corbet has admitted, produced with the help of AI.")

The essay notes that several of 2024's other Oscar-nominated films also employed Respeecher, including Dune: Part Two and Emilia Pérez. "What matters here is not this particular infraction but the precedent it sets, the course it establishes for culture."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A 37-year-old Tennessee man was arrested Thursday, accused of stealing Blu-rays and DVDs from a manufacturing and distribution company used by major movie studios and sharing them online before the movies' scheduled release dates. According to a US Department of Justice press release, Steven Hale worked at the DVD company and allegedly stole "numerous 'pre-release' DVDs and Blu-rays" between February 2021 and March 2022. He then allegedly "ripped" the movies, "bypassing encryption that prevents unauthorized copying" and shared copies widely online. He also supposedly sold the actual stolen discs on e-commerce sites, the DOJ alleged.

Hale has been charged with "two counts of criminal copyright infringement and one count of interstate transportation of stolen goods," the DOJ said. He faces a maximum sentence of five years for the former, and 10 years for the latter. Among blockbuster movies that Hale is accused of stealing are Dune, F9: The Fast Saga, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Godzilla v. Kong, and, perhaps most notably, Spider-Man: No Way Home. The DOJ claimed that "copies of Spider-Man: No Way Home were downloaded tens of millions of times, with an estimated loss to the copyright owner of tens of millions of dollars."

Amazon has launched a pilot program testing "AI-aided dubbing" for select content on Prime Video, offering translations between English and Latin American Spanish for 12 licensed movies and series including "El Cid: La Leyenda," "Mi Mama Lora" and "Long Lost." The company describes a hybrid approach where "localization professionals collaborate with AI," suggesting automated dubbing receives professional editing for accuracy. The initiative, the company said, aims to increase content accessibility as streaming services expand globally.