It’s clear that Hollywood studios want to use AI in movie making. How to do so remains elusive, as the tech’s shortcomings become immediately obvious in practice and prohibitively expensive even for devout firms. Still, even a half-baked dynamic could fetch a decent price tag. The Bourne Identity and Jumper director Doug Liman is taking his AI-generated film to this year’s Cannes, looking for a buyer. And as long as we’re being painfully on the nose, the movie is about bitcoin.
The Wrap’s Emily Zemler visited the set of Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi. The thriller follows model turned reporter (Gal Gadot) being recruited by a crypto millionaire (Pete Davidson) to investigate a doctor (Casey Affleck) who may be Satoshi Nakamoto, the alias of bitcoin’s elusive creator. Filmed out of a car showroom, the actors and outfits are real, but all the lighting, sets and post-production will be assigned to generative AI.
“We decided to use AI very early on,” Ryan Kavanaugh tells Zemler. “We budgeted out what it would be to do it practically and it was over $300 million. It has about 200 distinct locations, from Antarctica to Antigua to Vegas, which is obviously unproducible. We realized we could bring down the cost by utilizing some of the AI tools out there.”
Clearly seeking a middle ground with skeptics and labor groups, Bitcoin still employed 200 crew, half of which are cast members. Chroma key productions have been the norm for a while, the novelty here being that the task of replacing green screens with the final product will be handled by 55 “AI artists.” Producer Lawrence Grey tells The Wrap that they’re using AI “the right way.”
Even if it impresses the board, AI cheerleaders are constantly finding out that the public do not view the technology favorably, nor looking to pay ticket price for it. Disney recently laid off 1,000 staff at Marvel Studios, hitting their effects team hardest. It forecasts where studios would like production trends to bend.
The current play is marketing your use of AI to cut a deal with anyone willing to invest in it, regardless if the tech will every pay out. This happens to be what Casey Affleck’s brother Ben did with Netflix just last month for the sum of $600 million. All the funnier to pin this project on a thriller on bitcoin, another tax on the gullible, about the identity of Nakamoto, who The New York Times recently revealed may be British computer scientist Adam Back.