Star Wars director calls AI technology ‘the future’ of film-making and says ‘there’s nothing you can do about it’

The Star Wars director, George Lucas, has added his voice to the growing chorus of film-makers receptive to the rising use of AI tools in moviemaking.

Speaking in an interview with A Rabbit’s Foot, Lucas, 82, said: “Artificial intelligence means it’s much easier for us to make movies.”

A combination of fact and fiction leaves the celebrated documentarian’s puzzling project about software training wanting for depth

Marc Isaacs’ new film is a curious, intriguing, semi-sincere affair that I couldn’t make friends with. It is an odd, shallow piece of work about artificial intelligence that is itself exasperatingly artificial, a self-aware docudrama hybrid. Isaacs is, or rather pretends to be, licensing the vivid characters from his previous, acclaimed documentaries to a fictional AI research lab called Synthetic Sincerity at the fictional University of Southern England, so that the lab’s software can be “trained” in the creation of AI human figures on screen.

The lab’s research staff are played by actors, or at any rate people acting; these include Lebanese independent film-maker Lynn El Safah. Isaacs has amusing scripted conversations about this project with a disapproving AI avatar on screen, like Max Headroom of old, whose face is digitally modelled on Romanian actor Ilinca Manolache, from Radu Jude’s Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World. The film, however, does not show the process by which Manolache was approached and her face transformed into an AI figure.

Netflix, A24, Focus Features, and Warner Bros.' Clockwork have all reportedly decided to pass on picking up Artificial - director Luca Guadagnino's new biographical drama about OpenAI cofounder / CEO Sam Altman - for distribution deals. And while Neon and Mubi are still said to be interested in the film, this situation makes it seem like Hollywood no longer has the courage to tell critical stories about Big Tech.

Postproduction on Artificial was nearly finished when Amazon MGM unexpectedly announced last week that it no longer plans to distribute the film. The news came as a surprise given how far along the movie was and reports that Amazon …

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One of Taika Waititi's greatest strengths as a director is his unique voice; he's able to bring a light touch to tragedy (Jojo Rabbit) and a gentle sadness to offbeat comedy (Our Flag Means Death). That makes him an excellent choice to direct Klara and the Sun, based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. Sony Pictures just released the first trailer, and it's giving strong Hunt for the Wilderpeople vibes—a good thing, from my perspective, since that's my favorite Waititi film.

Per the official premise:

Based on the bestselling novel from Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro and written and directed by Academy Award winner Taika Waititi, Klara and the Sun introduces audiences to Klara (Jenna Ortega), an Artificial Friend who wants nothing more than to find the perfect home. When Klara meets Josie (Mia Tharia), each immediately senses a kindred spirit in the other. Josie has a fraught relationship with her mother (Amy Adams), and they’ve suffered great loss, but Klara’s innocent wonder and unwavering loyalty begin to heal the family and bring light to Josie’s complicated world.

The cast also includes Natasha Lyonne as an artificial friend (AF) store manager; Rachel House as the housekeeper, Melania; Aran Murphy (son of Cillian Murphy) as Josie's best friend, Rick; and Sophia Bryant-Taukiri as Josie's older sister, Sal. Steve Buscemi and Harry Greenwood also appear in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

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The Toy Story franchise began with a story about a vintage doll feeling threatened by the arrival of an electronic action figure. Woody and Buzz's rivalry embodied a shift that was happening in the '90s as children's toys were becoming more technologically sophisticated, and while toys have gotten even more tech-focused in the years since, there's also an entirely new world of smart gadgets and digital platforms that now shape kids' playtime.

Though Toy Story 5 is a continuation of Woody and Buzz's adventures in humanland, it is also a poignant exploration of what it's like for kids to grow up in a world where they're often encouraged to ex …

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By this time next year, Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch intends to have added Roku to his already expansive media empire. Should the acquisition go through, Fox will gain control of Roku's modest library of original programming, and the newly combined company will become "the third-largest player in U.S. television" in terms of viewing share. But the most significant thing that Murdoch buys with this deal is direct access to the 100 million households that make up Roku's user base.

It's precisely because Roku and Fox are very different kinds of companies that a merger between the two could have a major impact on our modern media landsca …

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In 2026, Marvel and Mattel are both releasing projects designed to capitalize on people's love for iconic animated heroes from their childhoods. Masters of the Universe has put a live-action He-Man on the big screen, and the second season of X-Men '97 is about to fling some of Charles Xavier's mutants into an apocalyptic future. Both projects were clearly made by people who love the source material, and they are similarly filled with nerdy Easter eggs meant to get hardcore fans hyped up. X-Men '97 and Masters of the Universe are both nostalgia plays, but the biggest difference between the two - and arguably the reason one of them hasn't been …

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For all the noise that's been made about how generative AI is poised to revolutionize the filmmaking industry, there haven't really been any projects created with the technology that felt like the sort of entertainment people would pay to see. Most AI firms' video models are still only capable of churning out short bursts of visually inconsistent footage. And some of Hollywood's biggest AI partnerships have suddenly evaporated in ways that make it seem like studios might not be able to rely on the new technology coming out of Silicon Valley. For the most part, short-form video slop appears to be the only thing that major production houses ar …

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Over 15 years after David Fincher and Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network premiered in theaters, Sony has released the first trailer for The Social Reckoning ahead of its theatrical release on October 9th. The follow-up takes place 17 years after the events portrayed in the original film and follows a young Facebook engineer who enlists the help of a Wall Street Journal reporter to expose the platform's secrets.

The film stars Jeremy Strong as a much older Mark Zuckerberg (doing a memorable impression of the Meta CEO's voice), Mikey Madison as Facebook engineer and whistleblower Frances Haugen, and Jeremy Allen White as WSJ reporter Jeff Horw …

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Forty years ago, the future seemed just around the corner—and the vehicle that was going to take us there was NASA's Space Shuttle. Originally envisioned as part of a larger integrated space transportation system, the shuttle was billed as a fully reusable vehicle, totally unlike the one-and-done capsules of the fading Apollo era, capable of making monthly (and perhaps even weekly) ferry flights to low Earth orbit.

The shuttle, it was hoped, would transform human space flight from extraordinary to mundane. Brands like Coke and Pepsi were quick to hop aboard and expand the Cola Wars into space, and there were even plans to blast Sesame Street's Big Bird into orbit.

The loss of Challenger in January 1986—carrying educator Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first private citizen in space—put the kibosh on all of that. The shuttle, while fantastically advanced, would never be the vehicle to help humankind slip all of our surly bonds, so to speak. Even operating at its most frantic peak in 1985 just before Challenger's loss, the shuttle hardware managed a maximum of nine flights in one calendar year; for most of the 1990s, it performed at five or six flights per year. Civilians in space—to say nothing of Big Bird—would have to wait.

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