Movies – Impact Lab

Pluribus Gets the AI Question Right (And Terrifyingly Wrong): Why the Hive Mind Is Our Best Warning Yet

December 30, 2025

By Futurist Thomas Frey

The Question Vince Gilligan Forces Us to Face

I turned on Pluribus expecting another dystopian sci-fi thriller. What I got instead was shocking—and immediately captivating. Within minutes, humanity transforms into a peaceful, content hive mind that shares all knowledge, fulfills every desire, and operates with perfect efficiency. No build-up. No gradual descent. Just an alien virus, instant transformation, and thirteen immune individuals clinging desperately to their messy, contradictory, deeply human autonomy.

The storytelling is unlike anything I’ve encountered. There’s no traditional plot arc of discovery and rising action. The catastrophe has already happened. The world has already ended—or been perfected, depending on your perspective. What remains is something more unsettling than any monster: a genuinely benevolent collective consciousness that can’t understand why anyone would resist joining.

Movies, Science & Technology News

Mission Possible: Russia races Tom Cruise for 1st film in space

July 13, 2021

Tom Cruise may be the craziest person in Hollywood, in terms of insisting on performing death-defying stunts in every movie he is in, but he is no Russian. And famously, you can’t beat Russians when it comes to death defiance. This concept once again comes into the public eye as six decades after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth, Russia now stands determined to beat the U.S. in a glitzier affair: the first movie shot in space.

On October 5, one of Russia’s most celebrated actresses, 36-year-old Yulia Peresild, is blasting off to the International Space Station (ISS) with film director Klim Shipenko, 38.

Their mission? Shoot the first film in orbit before the Americans do.

2020 Predictions, Entertainment, Movies, new technology, Science & Technology News

The future of movie theaters might look a lot like an apple store

May 20, 2020

From the people who brought you the iPhone: a whole new theatrical experience.

It’s no big secret that the movie theater industry is facing an existential crisis, with serious challenges coming from streaming platforms developed by technology giants like Apple, Netflix, and Amazon, and now a pandemic that’s forced cinemas to shutter around the globe. Weighing the future of movie theaters has become a favorite guessing game for media analysts. Last Friday, the New York Times asked: “Movie Theaters Are on the Brink. Can Wine and Cheese Save Them?”

Maybe not. But there’s reason to believe that the very tech companies threatening the industry could breathe new life into movie theaters.

Last week, rumors circulated that Amazon is interested in acquiring AMC, the largest theater chain in the United States. The news caused a sharp spike in AMC’s stock price. The company has had a rough year: The chain lost money in 2019, despite multiple billion-dollar tentpole releases such as Avengers: Endgame, The Lion King, and Frozen 2. And that was before the coronavirus pandemic shut down theaters worldwide. Now, some analysts have speculated that the company might file for bankruptcy. While the theater chain denied the speculation, it raised $500 million in additional debt to weather the current crisis.

Continue reading… “The future of movie theaters might look a lot like an apple store”

Analysis, Entertainment, Movies, Music, Science & Technology News

Dead celebrity earnings show gender inequality reaches beyond the grave

January 6, 2020

Dead famous: Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean in a still from Giant (1964). Warner Bros

Death is no excuse for celebrities to stop working. James Dean, despite being dead since 1955, has recently been cast in a new Vietnam war movie, Finding Jack. His co-starring role will be computer generated from old footage and photographs and voiced by another actor. The dead are now rivals with the living for parts in movies.

This controversial casting decision has been met with outrage by many actors on Twitter. Complaints have circulated about puppeteering as well as being disrespectful to the dead movie idol.

Continue reading… “Dead celebrity earnings show gender inequality reaches beyond the grave”

2019 Predictions, Entertainment, Movies, Science & Technology News

‘Blade Runner’ was set in November 2019. So how close have we come to that prediction of our future?

November 12, 2019

Science-fiction movies are pretty goddamn awesome because it goes beyond the restrictions of realism and predicts what can or cannot happen in the future. Netflix’s Black Mirror is likely everyone’s hot favourite now because it’s showing us the deranged situation we’ll be in 15-20 years from now. But what if I say that we are already living in a future that was foreseen by a movie from the 80’s? What if I say that the predictions made in it were pretty accurate and that we need to pull our socks up and start making amends? Yes, I am talking about Blade Runner.

Blade Runner is a 1982 sci-fi film directed by Ridley Scott, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. It is loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The movie is set in a dystopian (Well, not dystopian any more) future Los Angeles of 2019 in which synthetic humans (replicants) are revolting against the people who are building them and using them as slaves. That’s where Ford’s Rick Deckard comes in who’s tasked with hunting down replicants and it is through his eyes we get to see what Scott (And Dick) thinks November 2019 will look like.

Continue reading… “‘Blade Runner’ was set in November 2019. So how close have we come to that prediction of our future?”

Augmented Reality, Entertainment, Movies

Inside the bitter war to bring Tupac and Michael Jackson back to life

May 20, 2018

Dead celebrities reincarnated as holograms are big business – and, for two startups looking for fame and fortune, a source of untapped millions

A black curtain raises, the sound of a helicopter rotor fades and there he is. Surrounded by body-painted dancers, wearing a gold jacket and sitting on a throne at the centre of an ornate tableau. A flash brings the scene to life before Michael Jackson, five years after his death, makes his way down the steps on to the Las Vegas stage and proceeds to sing and dance his way through a previously unreleased song called “Slave to the Rhythm”.

Continue reading… “Inside the bitter war to bring Tupac and Michael Jackson back to life”

Artificial Intelligence, Entertainment, Film, Films, Ideas, Movies

AI program writes ‘perfect’ horror script, seeks crowdfunding

August 14, 2016

Artificial intelligence has evolved enough that it can now take care of daily chores, drive a car, function as a trusty shopping buddy, and… write a screenplay?

Impossible Things, an independent horror film project from Greenlight Essentials’ Jack Zhang, was reportedly produced (in part) by an augmented intelligence software tool which analyzes audience response data to help writers craft plot points that connect with viewer demand. The result is Impossible Things, a project billed by its creators as “the scariest and creepiest horror film out there.” The software co-wrote the film’s script.

Continue reading… “AI program writes ‘perfect’ horror script, seeks crowdfunding”