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Tom Hanks Brings Love of Space to New Immersive London Show

Tom Hanks poses at "The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks" immersive show at the Lightroom venue in London, Britain in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on December 5, 2023. (Justin Sutcliffe/Lightroom/Handout via Reuters)
Tom Hanks poses at "The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks" immersive show at the Lightroom venue in London, Britain in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on December 5, 2023. (Justin Sutcliffe/Lightroom/Handout via Reuters)
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Tom Hanks Brings Love of Space to New Immersive London Show

Tom Hanks poses at "The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks" immersive show at the Lightroom venue in London, Britain in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on December 5, 2023. (Justin Sutcliffe/Lightroom/Handout via Reuters)
Tom Hanks poses at "The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks" immersive show at the Lightroom venue in London, Britain in this undated handout photo obtained by Reuters on December 5, 2023. (Justin Sutcliffe/Lightroom/Handout via Reuters)

Archive footage of space rockets taking off beam across giant walls in a new immersive show in London, as Hollywood actor Tom Hanks narrates the story of human voyages to the moon.

"The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks" looks at the first moon landings of the Apollo missions from 1969 to 1972 and their successor, NASA's human spaceflight program, Artemis.

The next mission - the Artemis II lunar flyby - is planned for next year and interviews with the four-member team are also projected on the walls at the Lightroom gallery space in London's King Cross area.

"This show is about the wonder of the moon and the amazing creatures that have made it possible for members of their race to walk upon it," Oscar-winner Hanks told Reuters in a joint interview with astronauts Victor Glover and Jeremy Hansen, chosen to fly on what will be the first crewed voyage around the moon in more than 50 years.

"...Men and women are going to go back...very soon and isn't it wonderful that we have the curiosity and the drive in order to do something for which there is no rewarded riches, there's no territory that is going to be conquered," Hanks said. "The only thing that we are going to get is proof that...we can not only imagine the impossible, we can make the impossible possible.”

Joining pilot Glover, who will be the first Black astronaut to be sent on a lunar mission, and mission specialist Hansen are mission specialist Christina Koch and mission commander Reid Wiseman.

The Artemis program envisions building a long-term presence on the moon.

"We've been handed this amazing legacy and hopefully we can just contribute to it, but then hand that stick off to the next mission when it's time for them," Glover said.

Hanks played space commander Jim Lovell in the 1995 film "Apollo 13", about the troubled space mission which was forced to abort a planned moon landing after an oxygen-tank explosion.

Asked if he wanted to go to space himself, he said: “If they need somebody to go up and just keep the windows clean and serve the food and clean up afterwards, I'd be their man."

"There's something about the experience. I think you need time. I know people can go up and they can come down and that's a wonderful thing and that's great. But I think I need a little bit more time up there to ponder the infinite universe.”

"The Moonwalkers: A Journey With Tom Hanks" runs December 6 - April 21, 2024.

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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
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Video Game Performers Will Go on Strike Over Artificial Intelligence Concerns 

SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)
SAG-AFTRA signage is seen on the side of the headquarters in Los Angeles on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023. (AP)

Hollywood's video game performers announced they would go on strike Thursday, throwing part of the entertainment industry into another work stoppage after talks for a new contract with major game studios broke down over artificial intelligence protections.

The strike — the second for video game voice actors and motion capture performers under the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists — will begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday. The move comes after nearly two years of negotiations with gaming giants, including divisions of Activision, Warner Bros. and Walt Disney Co., over a new interactive media agreement.

SAG-AFTRA negotiators say gains have been made over wages and job safety in the video game contract, but that the two sides remained split over the regulation of generative AI. A spokesperson for the video game producers, Audrey Cooling, said the studios offered AI protections, but SAG-AFTRA’s negotiating committee said that the studios’ definition of who constitutes a "performer" is key to understanding the issue of who would be protected.

"The industry has told us point blank that they do not necessarily consider everyone who is rendering movement performance to be a performer that is covered by the collective bargaining agreement," SAG-AFTRA Chief Contracts Officer Ray Rodriguez said at a news conference Thursday afternoon. He said some physical performances are being treated as "data."

Without guardrails, game companies could train AI to replicate an actor’s voice, or create a digital replica of their likeness without consent or fair compensation, the union said.

"We strike as a matter of last resort. We have given this process absolutely as much time as we responsibly can," Rodriguez told reporters. "We have exhausted the other possibilities, and that is why we’re doing it now."

Cooling said the companies' offer "extends meaningful AI protections."

"We are disappointed the union has chosen to walk away when we are so close to a deal, and we remain prepared to resume negotiations," she said.

Andi Norris, an actor and member of the union's negotiating committee, said that those who do stunt work or creature performances would still be at risk under the game companies' offer.

"The performers who bring their body of work to these games create a whole variety of characters, and all of that work must be covered. Their proposal would carve out anything that doesn’t look and sound identical to me as I sit here, when, in truth, on any given week I am a zombie, I am a soldier, I am a zombie soldier," Norris said. "We cannot and will not accept that a stunt or movement performer giving a full performance on stage next to a voice actor isn’t a performer."

The global video game industry generates well over $100 billion dollars in profit annually, according to game market forecaster Newzoo. The people who design and bring those games to life are the driving force behind that success, SAG-AFTRA said.

Members voted overwhelmingly last year to give leadership the authority to strike. Concerns about how movie studios will use AI helped fuel last year’s film and television strikes by the union, which lasted four months.

The last interactive contract, which expired in November 2022, did not provide protections around AI but secured a bonus compensation structure for voice actors and performance capture artists after an 11-month strike that began in October 2016. That work stoppage marked the first major labor action from SAG-AFTRA following the merger of Hollywood’s two largest actors unions in 2012.

The video game agreement covers more than 2,500 "off-camera (voiceover) performers, on-camera (motion capture, stunt) performers, stunt coordinators, singers, dancers, puppeteers, and background performers," according to the union.

Amid the tense interactive negotiations, SAG-AFTRA created a separate contract in February that covered independent and lower-budget video game projects. The tiered-budget independent interactive media agreement contains some of the protections on AI that video game industry titans have rejected. Games signed to an interim interactive media agreement, tiered-budget independent interactive agreement or interim interactive localization agreement are not part of the strike, the union said.