‘Stranger Things: The First Shadow' first photos, ‘Legend of Zelda' gets release date, Tom Hanks spoofs ‘Forrest Gump,' and more of today's top stories
Netflix's Emmy-winning Stranger Things will soon be eligible to win some Tony Awards. Sonia Friedman Productions has released first look images (see above and below) ahead of Friday's preview performance of Stranger Things: The First Shadow at The Marquis Theater on Broadway. Director Stephen Daldry claimed, "The challenge is to create a visceral experience for the audience, where they feel shock and awe, surprise and delight. You have to deliver that." Co-creator Ross Duffer added, "The first time we saw the play, we were blown away." His brother Matt Duffer chimed in, "They pulled everything off, and then some. It was one of the most thrilling experiences of our lives." If you can't make it to New York to see the Broadway show, don't worry — you can still get your Stranger Things fix later in 2025 when the fifth and final season arrives on Netflix.
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Netflix/Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
At long last, fans of Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda video game series will be able to see their favorite characters on the big screen. Start saving up your rupees now! While plot details and casting information are still unknown, Sony has scheduled the live-action adaptation for a theatrical release on March 26, 2027. Wes Ball (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, The Maze Runner) will direct the highly anticipated project. The fantasy game series takes place in the kingdom of Hyrule and focuses on Link, an elf-like Hylian, who, with the help of his trusty Master Sword, tries to save Princess Zelda from the evil Ganon. There have been approximately 21 original Zelda video games released between 1986 and 2024.
Actor-musician Chet Hanks, whose famous father Tom Hanks won the Best Actor Oscar for Forrest Gump (1994), is now spoofing the iconic character. Chet and his longtime friend Drew Arthur's country duo Something Out West has a new music video titled "You Better Run" that's all about Forrest, the inspirational character who's famous for recounting his amazing life to strangers while sitting at a Georgia bus stop. In the video, Chet is seen offering up chocolates on the bench beside Tom, riding on a boat similar to Forrest's shrimp boat "Jenny" (inspired by Robin Wright's character), and partaking in a cross-country run.
Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen (Melvin and Howard, 1980) will be joining Season 2 of Netflix's hit comedy A Man on the Inside, alongside her husband, Ted Danson. Steenburgen will take on the role of Mona Margadoff, a former musician who knows something about that season's mystery. Danson returns as Charles Nieuwendyk, an aging father and widower who gains a new lease on life when he is hired to help out a private detective agency. Season 1 was named one of AFI's 2024 TV programs of the year and received nominations at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards for Danson.
Paramount
On April 18, the Museum of the Moving Image in New York will introduce a new exhibit that's all about Paramount Pictures' Mission: Impossible film franchise. The museum pieces will honor Tom Cruise, who plays the big screen version of the classic field agent Ethan Hunt, as well as tease the eighth feature film, Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning, due out in theaters May 23. The Museum of the Moving Image said, "The exhibition will spotlight star and producer Tom Cruise' exceptional commitment to practical stunt work, and explore how the series combines technical ingenuity, personal discipline, and artistic commitment, all in service of storytelling, character development, and performance."
The Palm Springs International Film Festival has unveiled its dates for the 2026 calendar year. The 37th annual event will run from Jan. 2 to Jan. 12, with the awards gala scheduled for Friday, Jan. 2 at the Palm Springs Convention Center. Movie screenings will officially kick off Jan. 3, with the opening night presentation taking place that evening. In addition, the Palm Springs ShortFest is still set for June 24-30, 2025. Long considered a major early step on the road to the Academy Awards, nearly all of Palm Springs' 2025 honorees went on to receive Oscar nominations, with four winning: Adrien Brody (Desert Palm Achievement Award for The Brutalist), Kieran Culkin (Breakthrough Performance Award for A Real Pain), Mikey Madison (Breakthrough Performance Award for Anora), and Zoe Saldaña (Vanguard Award for Emilia Pérez).
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TechCrunch
13 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
Pocket FM gives its writers an AI tool to transform narratives, write cliffhangers, and more
India-based audio series platform maker Pocket FM aims to be the Netflix of audio. That is, the company intends to match its audio series with hundreds of episodes to its users' tastes. For that to work, it needs to release content rapidly — something it's now turning to AI to help with. The Lightspeed-backed startup is giving its writers an AI tool set that can do things like suggest better endings to an episode or make the narrative more engaging. The hope is that the tools will speed up the storywriting process. Pocket FM already uses some AI tools like ElevenLabs to generate voices for audio series. It also tested AI tools for writing and adaptation assistance internally. Rohan Nayak, Pocket FM's founder, said it's rolling out the AI tools to all writers, so it will take them less time to finish their episodes. Image Credits: Pocket FM The writing tool, dubbed CoPilot, can be used to help any writer create a story. CoPilot can transform narrative-based writing into dialog-based writing for a specific segment. It can also do 'beat analysis' to shape the writing in a way to makes it more engaging for an audio series of a particular genre. The tool additionally has basic chatbot-style writing features such as 'shorten,' 'expand,' and the ability to generate text via a prompt. To build CoPilot, the company examined thousands of hours of data points to understand what makes users engage more with a particular storyline in a specific genre. Based on that, it added writing suggestion features designed to increase conflict between characters and recommend endings for an episode to make it more exciting. AI can also suggest tags for background effects that can be used while producing the audio. The tool can automatically generate bios of characters, their relationships, and summarize plot points of different episodes, allowing creators to refer back to these details while writing. CoPilot also has a review tool, which checks for plot points, grammar, and leaves qualitative feedback through comments on an episode. Under the hood, Pocket FM is training smaller models to maintain context for a story for character arcs and relations, along with narrative consistency. Plus, utilizing signals from users, the startup is nudging AI to add more drama to the story. International expansion and localization plans Alongside the arrival of the AI tools, Pocket FM launched adaptation tools for various markets that not only translate the text from one language to another but also change names and phrases that are more suited to that region's culture. The company first debuted this tool as a part of the CoPilot suite in Germany earlier this year to convert stories from other regions after reportedly struggling to engage users in the European country last year. Nayak said the company saw great results from this trial, with a constant increase in monthly in-app revenue, which crossed $700,000 in June. Image Credits: Pocket FM 'When we started expanding into new regions, it used to take us 12-18 months to meaningfully exist in that market. You have to have at least 1,000 hours of content to start acquiring users and scaling the market. Now we can do this in less than three months,' Nayak said. The tool increased writer productivity by up to 50% for the German market in terms of show output. Plus, the tool helped the company create more error-free drafts of the shows that resulted in higher user retention for audio series. In the U.S, series created with the help of these new AI tools are now contributing 10% of playtime. Plus, these shows have generated $7 million in revenue in the last 12 months while reducing the cost of production by 2-3 times. Building tech to scale content generation As a result of adopting different AI features internally, Pocket FM has been able to scale the content quickly. The startup said it launches close to 1,000 pilots per month. And just the sheer volume of content results in a few of them becoming hits. But the audio show is just one part. The company is already working on tools to convert stories into comic strips with its Pocket Toons platform. Plus, Nayak said video is a possible format the company could explore, too. The startup, which has raised over $196 million in funding across rounds, is experimenting with a micro drama app as well. Image Credits: Screenshot by TechCrunch By next year, Pocket FM wants to release its own singular large language model (LLM), which will be based on data collected from its shows and incorporate different tools like writing assistance, adoption, dramatization, and story context retention. The company said that when it switches to its own LLM, it won't need to train a ton of small models for separate features. AI's potential downsides Adopting AI has had its side effects. Pocket FM has already laid off people who were employees or contractors across multiple rounds in the last 12 months. There have also been reports of writers seeing diminished returns over time. And the company is facing lawsuits in California over employment and wage issues. 'Like most content-led industries, we work with a diverse network of writers, voice artists, and production partners on a project basis, tailoring resources to each market. AI has had minimal impact on our core creative community; instead, it has opened new avenues to expand reach and output,' a company rep said, in response to these layoffs. There are questions around quality, as well. The company measures quality by the retention numbers of a show. The base argument is that the new AI tools act as a writers' room even for solo creators, so they will be able to produce more content at a rapid rate. Plus, based on the numbers, writers can quickly edit the story with the help of AI. However, these tools can very well induce 'AI slop' — or low-quality, AI-generated content — into the platform and could impact a user's recommendations, making it difficult for them to discover good stories. Pocket FM argues that stories that have a solid structure will gain popularity, despite AI helping them. The company noted that every piece of content is reviewed by its AI-powered moderation framework to ensure quality and originality. It also claims its AI moderation checks for things like duplication, copyright issues, content health, and other quality measures before approving audio to go live. Each show receives and equal push, and user engagement ultimately determines a show's ranking. Another concern is that writers could become overly dependent on AI over time. In Germany, AI is writing more content than humans per show for select titles. With Pocket FM's plans to roll out more AI tools, the amount of AI-written content could increase. And with that, the expectation of churning out more shows could rise, too. Unless user adoption also rises rapidly, average returns could drop. The company didn't directly address TechCrunch's questions about returns, but said that its AI tools can speed up a writer's work and help them edit an episode based on numbers and audience feedback. That is they could make targeted improvements, instead of doing a full rewrite. 'This way, faster content creation doesn't necessarily dilute quality or relevance; it just shifts the writer's role towards editing, refining, and steering more productive output,' a spokesperson said in a statement.
NBC News
15 minutes ago
- NBC News
Kid Cudi says he 'hated every minute' of testifying in Diddy trial
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CNN
29 minutes ago
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