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October 10 - October 16

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Apple TV+ announced the thrilling final chapter of the beloved animated adventure trilogy "WondLa," set to debut globally on November 26, 2025. Hailing from Skydance Animation and based on Tony DiTerlizzi's New York Times bestselling book series "The Search for WondLa," the series is showrun and executive produced by Bobs Gannaway...

PWhile the majority of Hollywood is fearful of the impact artificial intelligence could have on the industry — most recently in the form of AI actress Tilly Norwood — "Mad Max" director George Miller likens it to how the Renaissance movement affected painting. Miller said the debate around AI "echoes earlier moments in art history," particularly during the Renaissance era, when the introduction of oil painting "gave artists the freedom to revise and enhance their work over time." "That shift sparked controversy – some argued that true artists should be able to commit to the canvas without corrections, others embraced the new flexibility," Miller told The Guardian. "A similar debate unfolded in the mid-19th century with the arrival of photography. Art has to evolve. And while photography became its own form, painting continued. Both changed, but both endured. Art changed."...

PItalian producer Andrea Iervolino, who has worked on Hollywood movies like Ferrari and To The Bone, has announced what he says is the first AI-directed movie, The Sweet Idleness. The movie depicts a future society where just 1% of humanity still works, as machines have taken most jobs, allowing the rest of the population to live leisurely. The AI program used to direct the movie is called FellinAI, presumably a reference to the legendary Italian director Federico Fellini. While the technology was designed to "celebrate the poetic and dreamlike language of great European cinema," Iervolino said he was the "human-in-the-loop," serving as a supervisor and producer to monitor the technology. The movie's cast, meanwhile, is produced by Iervolin's company Actor+, which works with real people who lend their likeness and personality to create digital characters...

The audiovisual industry in Brazil had last year a R$ 70.2 billion (US$ 13.1 billion) total impact on the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and generated a total of 608,970 direct, indirect and induced jobs, according to a just-out Oxford Economics study "The Economic Contribution of Brazil's Audiovisual Industry in 2024." The Motion Picture Association (MPA) in Brazil, which commissioned the study, released it during RioMarket, the business section of the Rio International Film Fest. Brazil's local audiovisual industry employees directly the same amount of people as the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector and over 50% more than automotive manufacturers in the country...

New York City Economic Development Corporation, New York City Industrial Development Agency and real estate investor Bungalow Projects have closed on two transactions totaling $552 million to support construction of high-end film and television production studios in Brooklyn. The sites at 176 Dikeman Street in Red Hook and 242 Seigel Street in Bushwick will be branded as Echelon Studios and, the city estimated, serve as economic and industry drivers generating 2,400 jobs between construction and operations. The 600,000 square feet of facilities will accommodate big-budget productions "and fill New York City's undersupply of purpose-built stages critical to industry growth," the announcement said. The news follows an expansion of New York's film and television production incentives this year and years of the increased competition from neighboring New Jersey and other states. "With the State's expanded Film Tax Credit Program fueling more production activity, Echelon Studios will be ideally positioned to capture this wave of demand while creating thousands of jobs for New Yorkers," said Bungalow Projects co-founder Travis Feehan...