Hollywood
‘Begin Again’ trailer 2 features music by ‘Maroon 5’ Adam Levine
MUMBAI: The Weinstein Company recently released a new trailer for its upcoming musical romantic comedy, Begin Again. The second trailer features a new song by the film’s actor and music producer Adam Levine called “Lost Stars”.
The latest film from writer-director John Carney (Once), Begin Again is a soul-stirring comedy about what happens when lost souls meet and make beautiful music together. Gretta and her long-time boyfriend Dave are college sweethearts and song-writing partners who decamp for New York when he lands a deal with a major label. But the trappings of his new-found fame soon tempt Dave to stray, and a reeling, lovelorn Gretta is left to fend for herself. Her world takes a turn for the better when Dan, a disgraced record-label exec, stumbles upon her performing on an East Village stage and is immediately captivated by her raw talent. From this chance encounter emerges an enchanting portrait of a mutually transformative collaboration, set to the soundtrack of a summer in New York City.
Begin Again is written and directed by Academy Award winner John Carney (Once) and produced by Anthony Bregman, Tobin Armbrust and Judd Apatow. The film stars Golden Globe Award nominee Keira Knightly (Atonement) as Gretta, with Grammy Award winner Adam Levine (lead vocalist of Maroon 5) as Dave and Screen Actors’ Guild Award nominee Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are Alright) as Dan. Begin Again also stars Grammy Award winner Cee Lo Green, BAFTA Award winner James Corden (Gavin & Stacey), Golden Globe award nominee Mos Def (Something the Lord Made), Academy Award nominee Hailey Steinfeld (True Grit) and Academy Award nominee Catherine Keener (Being John Malkovich).
With the soundtrack of Begin Again scheduled to release on 1 July, Adam Levine’s own record label, 222 Records will debut its first soundtrack compilation.
Watch the musical trailer below:
Hollywood
Utopai Studios partners Huace to deploy PAI for long form content
Deal includes revenue sharing as Huace adopts AI engine across global ops
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… algorithm, the script just got a silicon co-writer. In a move that signals how storytelling itself is being re-engineered, U.S.-based Utopai Studios has partnered China’s Huace Film & TV Co. Ltd. to bring artificial general intelligence into the heart of long-form content creation.
At the centre of the deal is PAI, Utopai’s cinematic storytelling system, which Huace will deploy as a core engine across its production pipeline from development and creative iteration to global localisation. The partnership includes a large-scale annual usage commitment from Huace, alongside a usage-based revenue-sharing model, underscoring both ambition and commercial confidence on both sides.
For Huace, one of China’s largest film and television companies, the bet is not on automation alone but on scale with control. With distribution spanning over 200 countries and a presence across more than 20 international platforms, including Netflix and YouTube, the company brings a vast content ecosystem where even marginal efficiency gains can translate into significant output shifts. Its extensive TV IP library further positions it as fertile ground for AI-assisted storytelling workflows.
The choice of PAI follows what Huace described as a rigorous evaluation of existing AI tools, many of which remain limited to fragmented use cases such as video generation or editing. What tipped the scales, according to the company, was PAI’s ability to handle long-form narrative complexity maintaining continuity, structure, and creative coherence across entire story arcs rather than isolated clips.
Utopai, for its part, is using the partnership to anchor its international expansion strategy, pitching PAI as an enterprise-ready system built for customisation, privacy, and regulatory adaptability across markets. That positioning becomes particularly relevant as global media companies increasingly scrutinise how AI integrates into proprietary workflows.
The timing is notable. Earlier this month, Utopai upgraded PAI to support three-minute 4K video generation and advanced multi-shot sequencing features designed to tackle one of AI storytelling’s biggest hurdles: consistency across scenes.
What emerges is not just another tech collaboration, but a glimpse into how the grammar of filmmaking could evolve. Because if stories were once crafted frame by frame, the next chapter might just be coded scene by scene.
