Hollywood
Production on Fast & Furious 7 to resume 1 April
MUMBAI: Since the death of famous actor Paul Walker on 30 November, the production on the upcoming sequel to the hit Fast & Furious franchise had been put on an indefinite hiatus. But, according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR), the shooting for Fast & Furious 7 will resume come April.
Walker, 40, who played a former FBI agent-turned-criminal Brian O’Conner in the action film, died with his friend, Roger Rodas, in a fatal car crash last year. The script was reworked following Walker’s sudden passing since the movie was still halfway done when the O’Conner depicter died. In the previous six films, Walker played the on-screen sidekick to Vin Diesel’s character of Dominic Toretto.
THR has reported that cameras would start rolling on or around 1 April in Atlanta and continue for six to eight weeks until filming is finished. In January, THR had reported that the writing staff of the film had opted to retire Walker’s character, instead of having it killed off.
According to earlier reports, the release date of the seventh instalment in the blockbuster franchise was pushed to 10 April, 2015.
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.
