HBO's 'The Last of Us' adaptation gets delayed

Source: HBO

If you were waiting for HBO's The Last of Us series, unfortunately, it isn't arriving any time soon. The company's channel programming president Casey Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter that the adaptation of Naughty Dog's apocalyptic games won't air this year. He didn't commit to another release date but said that filming was still underway in Calgary.

The Mandalorian's Pedro Pascal stars as the grizzled survivor Joel opposite his Game of Thrones' co-star Bella Ramsey as teen Ellie. The series' plot is based on the first game. We have Joel tasked with escorting Ellie to an organization looking for a cure to the brain infection ravaging humanity. The Last of Us series is written and executive produced by Chernobyl's Craig Mazin and Naughty Dog's Neil Druckmann.

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OnePlus launches Nord CE 2

Source: OnePlus

OnePlus's Core Edition Nord model gets an upgrade with the just launched OnePlus Nord CE 2. The company revamps the look of the phone to sport a design reminiscent of sister company OPPO's Find X3 Pro. The redesign makes sense, given how the OPPO and OnePlus teams have merged. Even with the new look, the Nord CE 2 gets the same triple rear camera setup as its predecessor, including a 64-megapixel main camera, 8-megapixel ultra-wide, and 2-megapixel depth.

The Nord CE 2 runs on a Dimensity 900 processor with 6GB or 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, 128GB of expandable UFS 3.1 storage and Android 11-based OxygenOS 11.3. It retains the original model's 6.43-inch 90Hz AMOLED display, 16-megapixel selfie camera, and 4,500Mah battery with 65W wired charging support. OnePlus retails the Nord CE 2 for INR 23,999 (roughly CA$410 converted) for the 6GB variant. It goes on sale in India on February 22, followed by Europe on March 10.

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'Oldboy' director shoots a martial arts fantasy short with an iPhone 13 Pro for Apple

Apple taps famous Korean director Park Chan-wook to shoot a short film for its "Shot on iPhone" campaign. Park, best known for the action thriller movie Oldboy, recorded a 20-minute martial arts fantasy film called Life Is But a Dream on the iPhone 13 Pro. You can see it in the embedded video above.

The synopsis on the YouTube video clip reads: "An undertaker who needs woods to build a coffin for the savior of his village digs up an abandoned grave. But while doing so, he accidentally awakens the ghost of an ancient swordsman. Now the ghost tries to take back his coffin." 

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Spotify invests in podcast advertising with Chartable, Podsights acquisitions

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Spotify has just announced it bought two major podcast ad tech companies, Chartable and Podsights, to offer more features to its podcast advertisers and podcasters. Podsights will help its advertisers view more detailed information on who clicked on an ad and what actions they took (like buying the product).

As for Chartable, Spotify will offer the company's two promotional tools (SmartLinks and SmartPromos) to its podcasters. SmartLinks offers "shareable, trackable URLs that automatically route listeners to their podcasts." It'll provide data on both podcast clicks and downloads. While SmartPromos lets podcasters see which ads result in the most downloads, allowing them to measure the success of ad campaigns.

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