Future Stories

What could make the apes so shocked? Gif: Fox Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is just over a week away and if you are still on the fence about it, a major revelation in a new trailer might change that. Fox just released the film’s final trailer and while it’s mostly just a highlight reel of the major beats in the film—as trailers often are—we also learn something quite new and potentially shocking about the film. We won’t spoil it here, but it’s in the trailer, so watch at your own risk; below, we’ll talk about it a bit. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes | Final Trailer Yes, humans can talk in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes—presumably not all of them since you see the apes in total and utter shock at the revelation, but it happens. Why do we care? Because at the end of War for the Planet of the Apes, it was clear the Simian Flu that killed most of humanity had mutated and was now actively devolving humans. All surviving humans began to lose the ability to speak. Kingdo...

Image: Netflix/Scanline VFX Netflix’s 3 Body Problem won over audiences with its sci-fi mysteries , complex characters , and startling visuals . If you’re still haunted by that Panama Canal scene —in which a ship full of people is sliced into ribbons—or the unpredictable landscapes of the VR game world, here’s a peek behind how they came together. In this VFX reel provided exclusively to io9 by the Netflix-owned Scanline VFX, you can get a look at the Panama Canal scene, as well as two memorable sequences from the VR world: the dehydration/rehydration of the “Follower” who’s constantly doomed by choices made in the game, and the scene in which the world loses gravity and everyone begins floating into the sky. Check out the video here! 3 Body Problem’s VFX Team on Creating a Sci-Fi World io9 also got a chance to chat over email with one of the two VFX supervisors at Scanline who worked on this project, Boris Schmidt. He, along with Mathew Giampa, reported to 3 Body Problem’s ov...

Unit 2 of the Shin Hanul nuclear power plant in South Korea has entered commercial operation, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) announced. The unit is the second of two APR-1400 reactors at the site, with a further two planned. Georgia Power has announced the start of commercial operations at the second of the two ... Read more

Image: Marvel Since time immemorial, the machine of movie merchandising has revealed plot details—or at the very least got people to wildly and often incorrectly speculate about them—well before a movie’s release. So it’s perhaps fitting then, that the most we’ve seen of Captain America: Brave New World so far is not in a trailer, or a carefully curated press reveal, but a fast food tie-in nearly a year before release. That’s thanks to McDonalds, which has started promoting a new Happy Meal toy campaign that features characters from the next Captain America movie —inadvertently revealing, in chibi plush toy form, our first look at multiple characters from the film in the process. Turn back now, lest the virgin eyes of your Marvel fandom be spoiled and rendered impure by the power of Ronald McDonald : The promotion gives us a few looks at characters beyond Sam Wilson himself, like Falcon and Winter Soldier’s Danny Ramirez as Joaquin Torres , the new Falcon—or the fact that the R...

Image: Paramount+ Knuckles hits Paramount+ with a limited series that picks up on the red echidna’s journey to making Earth home. The third Sonic franchise film may be delayed to next year, but in the meantime you can catch up with Knuckles (Idris Elba) on his own side quest with Wade Whipple (Adam Pally). Knuckles finds himself on the run from some nefarious villains as he settles into life on Earth, all while helping Wade on his journey to find his inner warrior and take on a mysterious figure from his past at a bowling tournament. Here’s what we liked and didn’t like about the six-episode Knuckles series now streaming on Paramount+. Liked: Sonic Universe Building Image: Paramount+ The show expands the world of Sonic, setting up that Knuckles needs to find his new Earth tribe. It really establishes that this is a found family story for the younger audiences in a clever way, even if the kid-like characters happen to be voiced by the likes of Idris Elba. Hearing the action ...

Jeff Bridges returns to Tron. Screenshot: Disney Jared Leto may be the main star of the upcoming Tron: Ares , but we now know the face of the franchise will also join him. In a new podcast, Jeff Bridges revealed that he’s returning to the third film in a franchise that he headlined both in 1 982's original and 2010's sequel. “I’m heading off this Saturday to play a part in the third installment of the Tron story. I’m excited about that,” Bridges said on the Film Comment podcast , about 29 minutes into that link. “[Jared] Leto is the star of this third one. I’m really anxious to work with him. I’ve admired his work.” It’s definitely worth listening to the interview to hear Bridges reminisce about the white leotard he had to wear in Tron, as well as the motion capture tech he endured while being “de-aged” for Tron: Legacy (“I didn’t like the way I looked... I felt like I looked more like Bill Maher than myself. It was kind of bizarre.”) He also talks excitedly about Tron: A...

TSMC introduced its System-on-Wafer (TSMC-SoW™) technology, an innovative solution to bring revolutionary performance to the wafer level in addressing the future AI requirements for hyperscaler datacenters. At the TSMC 2024 North America Technology Symposium, they debuted the TSMC A16™ technology, featuring leading nanosheet transistors with innovative backside power rail solution for production in 2026, bringing ... Read more

Chuck Cook tests Tesla FSD 12.3.6 which has improved automatic parking assist. You can pick parking spots in front or behind you and the system will park the car. It can parallel park and parking perpendicular or at angles.The parking in FSD 12.3.6 is like a separate app that does not seem to be integrated ... Read more

LightSolver, creator of a new laser-based computing paradigm, announced a breakthrough in quantum-inspired high-performance computing. Its LPU100 system unleashes the power of 100 lasers to solve the toughest optimization problems, challenging the processing times of quantum and supercomputers. The LPU100’s laser array represents 100 continuous variables, and can tackle problems with up to 120^100 combinations, ... Read more

Image: Disney Animation Just before the weekend started, the animation space lit up when someone suddenly leaked a lot of never-before-seen internal material from Disney. We won’t link to it, but included in that material is a sizable amount of stuff from the company’s TV animation slate across its Disney Channel and Disney XD networks that goes as far back as the mid-2000s. Gravity Falls , Owl House , you name it: if it’s got a sizable fanbase (and isn’t a Marvel cartoon), then it’s probably featured here in some fashion. Included in the leak were over 20 pilots, some of which were shows that’d been pitched, but ultimately never went anywhere. Similarly, there were also 40 show bibles—documents creators use to pitch their show, from the tone and characters to breakdowns for potential future seasons. Disney’s animated slate didn’t have quite the highs of Cartoon Network or even Nickelodeon, but what’s here may have you thinking about some shows you haven’t thought about in a while....

Image: Universal Pictures The original Happy Death Day in 2017 was one of those “why hasn’t this done before?” horror movies, wherein college girl Tree (played by Jessica Rothe) got stuck in a time loop that always ended with her getting murdered. That first movie did really well, and its sequel Happy Death Day 2U also did pretty good! Over the past few years, it hasn’t been clear if a sequel would ever happen, but good news: it’s apparently still in the cards. While doing promo for her newest film Boy Kills World, Rothe revealed to ScreenGeek that director Christopher Landon “has the whole thing figured out. We just need to wait for Blumhouse and Universal to get their ducks in a row.” As far as she’s concerned, Tree “deserves her third and final chapter to bring that incredible character and franchise to a close or a new beginning. But my fingers are so crossed.” Presumably, she’s referring to how busy the two studios have been and where it can fit on their schedules. Settin...

Tesla has launched Enhanced Autopilot subscriptions in China. It is unclear if this is actually what is called FSD (full self driving) in the USA. • 699 yuan/month ($99 USD) • 1,399 yuan for 3 months ($66 USD/month) NEWS: Tesla has launched Enhanced Autopilot subscriptions in China. • 699 yuan/month ($99 USD)• 1,399 yuan for ... Read more

Image: Prime Video Fallout’s a pretty good show , and one of the big reasons why is the ever-reliable Walton Goggins . As the Ghoul—or Cooper Howard, once upon a time—he’s a menace to Lucy and everyone else throughout the season, while being enjoyable to watch both in the irradiated present and the pre-nuclear past. Creating him and others like him took some time, partially because they are and aren’t like anything else you’ve seen before on TV. Talking to Polygon , associate costume designer Amy Westcot explained how the costuming team concepted different “ghoulness” stages, of which there are “so many different degrees.” In the games, ghouls can exist as an average person with the right meds, otherwise they become Feral and attack basically anything that moves. They’re that world’s zombie equivalent, just in two different flavors where one is “kind of on their way out” and considerably deadlier. But watching ghouls go from normal to Feral isn’t a pleasant experience, one the show...

Image: Taurin Clarke/BOOM! Comics The Power Rangers have been doing their thing for decades, but recent times have been kind of all over the place. While the Boom! comics have been going for nearly a decade in the Mighty Morphin time period under a rotating roster of creators, Hasbro hasn’t done a lot with the larger property. But a new beginning is seemingly in store for the Rangers, so let’s unpack what’s happening, shall we? Earlier in the week, Hasbro revealed it’d outsourced the Power Rangers toyline to Playmates, which has previously made third-party merch for properties like Ben 10, Frozen, and Godzilla vs. Kong. The first set of products will debut in 2025 with Mighty Morphin toys aimed directly at kids, Playmate has rights to make any “cross-category” products it chooses (aka toys, plush, vehicles, etc.) for everywhere but Asia. Meanwhile, Hasbro will “retain all entertainment rights” for the Power Rangers property at large, and handle non-toy merchandise like fashion,...

Nextbigfuture at substack has an in depth article on China’s Molten Salt Nuclear energy projects. China is starting the operation of its 2 megawatt molten salt prototype reactor in 2024. They are progressively scaling up to 10 MW reactors, 100 MW and then a 168 MWe modular reactor around 2030. The full substack article is ... Read more

Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby (1968) Screenshot: Paramount It’s universally acknowledged that 1968's Rosemary’s Baby is an influential horror classic. Attempts to directly recapture that witchy magic , however, have fallen flat: 1976 made-for-TV sequel Look What’s Happened to Rosemary’s Baby is pretty universally despised, as is the 2014 miniseries remake with Zoe Saldaña. However, the latest Rosemary’s Baby-adjacent project actually seems... promising? Announced a few years ago but without many updates since then, Apartment 7A isco-written and directed by Natalie Erika James. James’ previous feature is 2020's Relic , a genuinely eerie tale of a woman (Emily Mortimer) struggling with caring for her aging, ailing mother (Robyn Nevin) with the help of her own daughter (Bella Heathcote)—and with zero help from the apparently malevolent entity lurking within the walls of their family home. Based on the strength of Relic, James definitely has experience exploring the lives o...

It’s a Xenomorph kind of day. Image: Fox Happy Alien Day to all those who celebrate. April 26, as many of you know , is the day pop culture has decided to celebrate one of the landmark franchises in science fiction: Alien. That’s because the planet in the sequel Aliens is LV-426—so, April 26. But while in the past Alien Day has been largely an excuse to simply rewatch or praise the old movies, this year is completely different. This is truly the best Alien Day ever. Why? Well, because there is so much amazing new Alien stuff coming, or out there right now, for fans to enjoy. Way more than ever before. What are we talking about? Here goes: Alien: Romulus Image: Fox Alien: Romulus The most exciting thing coming for Alien fans is the next movie in the franchise, Alien: Romulus, set for release in August. We’ve seen some footage and a trailer and think director Fede Alvarez is going to knock this one out of the park. He’s even celebrating Alien Day too by revealing the radio-...

The cover of Star Wars: The Last Command by Timothy Zahn. Image: Lucasfilm Arguably the most important, game-changing event in the history of Star Wars storytelling happened 10 years ago today. On April 25, 2014, Lucasfilm announced that the Star Wars Expanded Universe was being pushed aside. All future storytelling would be part of the same, cohesive canon, and the EU stories fans knew and loved over the years would become disconnected “Legends.” You can read the official announcement at this link , and doing so with 10 years of hindsight is kind of mind-boggling. In the decade since, Star Wars fans have been so inundated with new stories, all of which connect, we almost take for granted that Lucasfilm had to make the conscious decision to take all those previous stories, move them to the side, and clearly define that all stories moving ahead were officially part of the same world. Plus, at the same time, there’s explicit acknowledgment that elements of the EU would, could, and...

Fisker warned investors in SEC filing it could seek bankruptcy protection within 30 days, as cash reserves continue to shrink.Fisker missed an $8.4 million interest payment on March 15 and has not been able to make it in the 30-day grace period since that date. The EV maker had already idled production in Austria and ... Read more

“What homework?” asks Deadpool. Image: Marvel Studios Outside of Avengers: Endgame , Deadpool & Wolverine may carry the most pre-release baggage of anything in Marvel history. For Deadpool, you’ve got not just two movies, but also all the behind-the-scenes drama leading up to them. With Wolverine, you’ve got 10 X-Men movies with all manner of wild stories, including the character actually dying. Then you’ve got the Marvel Cinematic Universe itself, including the TV shows which, as we’ve seen from the trailers , play a big role. Don’t sweat it, says director Shawn Levy. You can and will be rewarded for knowing all that, but you don’t need to know any of it. “I very much made this film with, certainly, a healthy respect and gratitude towards the rabid fan base that has peak fluency in the mythology and lore of these characters and this world,” he told the Associated Press . “But I didn’t want to presume that. This movie is built for entertainment, with no obligation to come pr...

John Krasinski and Steve Carell on The Office. Image: NBC Many of us watch The Office more often than we care to admit. We’ve spent so much time with the series that, over the years, the characters and the actors who portray them have almost become family. So when a video like this comes online, it’s more than just delightful. It’s cathartic. Two of the biggest actors to come off The Office, John Krasinski and Steve Carell, are soon teaming back up for Krasinski’s new movie, If. It’s a family movie about a child who can see the imaginary friends adults have long left behind. Krasinski wrote and directed the film and Carell provided his voice— which meant, at some point, the two had to meet up again. Thankfully, it was filmed. This is just the best. I think my favorite part of this video is that obviously the first meeting is the real genuine one but the two are such good friends and so comfortable with each other, that they immediately just riffed that second one. It’s so dam...

Joel Edgerton in Dark Matter Image: Apple TV+ If you’ve read Blake Crouch ’s 2016 novel Dark Matter —and a lot of people have, considering it’s a best-seller—you’re probably wondering how the upcoming Apple TV+ adaptation will handle the high-concept gimmick that propels the story: a box, designed by a genius that’s one version of the main character, that allows people to access parallel dimensions. Translating the story to the screen will allow the visuals to handle some of the heavy lifting, for sure, as we see Joel Edgerton’s Jason yanked from his pleasant but vaguely unfulfilling life as a physics professor and sent on a multi-dimensional scramble to find his way home. While this is happening, the genius version of Jason slides into “our” Jason’s life—most alarmingly, his marriage to Daniela (Jennifer Connelly)—and all those visits to different universes start causing chaos within reality itself. It’s a lot to keep track of, especially for the actors, who were tasked with pl...

Image: Marvel The concept of tolerance has weighed heavily upon Disney+ seriesX-Men ‘97 . And now as the world and what is left of mutantkind looks upon the ruins of Genosha , the series is ready to grit its teeth and show some fangs, giving us righteously bitter examination of just where the morals of that tolerance—the morals cast in the shadow of its greatest idealist, Charles Xavier—have gotten its heroes and villains alike. X-Men ‘97 gave itself room to breathe last week in “Lifedeath Part 2,” even if that room wasn’t exactly afforded to the characters who needed it in that episode. But in distancing “Bright Eyes” from the immediate fallout of “Remember It” by even just a few weeks lets the event sit with the audience and our characters alike: and the grief and anger that lingers here hits all the harder for it. If Genosha represented the very best of Charles Xavier’s dream—a home where mutants could exist as themselves, be seen by the world as themselves, and embraced as ju...