Filmmaker Steven Soderbergh is known for dipping his toes into the latest moviemaking technology, so, with AI being a new technology that everyone from filmmakers to studios is trying to gauge if it’s worthwhile or not, we’re not exactly surprised that he’s itching to explore it for future projects. And as he tells it, the director is already using it in his documentary focusing on iconic music-world couple John Lennon and Yoko Ono, alongside a gestating Spanish-American War film that he’s enlisted recent Best Actor Oscar nominee Wagner Moura (“The Secret Agent”) for a key role.
In an interview with veteran critic Amy Taubin for Filmmaker Magazine, Soderbergh dished about his current use of the technology and how it has helped birth surreal, dreamy imagery for that aforementioned Lennon/Ono doc. Despite rampant objections to the use of AI, the filmmaker is aware that AI “desperately requires” human supervision.
“It’s worth talking about what that technology might be good at. I’ve been working with AI lately on the John Lennon and Yoko Ono documentary that we’re almost done with. AI has been helpful in creating thematically surreal images that occupy a dream space rather than a literal space. And that’s been really fun because you need a PhD in literature to tell it what to do. But like every other piece of technology, it desperately requires very close human supervision,” Soderbergh told Filmmaker Magazine of his current use of AI and how human knowledge/supervision is still very key to being able to get anything out of it.
Adding that he’s been in contact with the Lennon/Ono family along the way during the crative process on his documentary and what material he was able to uncover for it, “When we talked to Sean Lennon [John’s second son] about the film, he said he was worried that young people have no idea what John stood for, and he’s hopeful that our film will let them know what he did outside of making music. It was a wonderful, serendipitous thing that the three-hour audio recording John and Yoko made for RKO Radio just a few hours before he was killed came up as a possibility for a film. Clips from it were heard after he died, but not the entire thing.”
Soderbergh is looking forward to sharing the doc with audiences and super-fans alike. “I’m excited for people just to hear it because of how open they both are about art and love, and politics, and how relevant everything they say remains. The hardest part for me was editing it down to something with a shape, because I didn’t want to lose any of it. Ninety percent of the visuals are archival stills, and 10 minutes, spread out over the 90-minute film, are these little pockets of images we created whenever they start talking philosophically.”
That’s not it, as Soderbergh has revealed he aims to incorporate AI into a feature film exploring the brutal Spanish-American War, which took place in 1898, and would see Moura in an undisclosed role. “And I’m trying to get a movie made about the Spanish-American War,” the director teased.
Filmmaker Magazine asked him if he’d use AI to help with ships and recreating the 1800s warfare scenes as the front took place in multiple locations, “A lot of AI. It’s my version of one of those. It’s a really good story, and nobody’s really done it. Every day that goes by, it becomes more timely. I’ve just got to get it cast. I’ve got Wagner Moura. I need a few more people. I have two studios circling, but it’s all about how much I can do for it. But if I can get the right cast together, that will eventize it, and people will feel they have to see it now rather than waiting two months until it streams. It’s a weird time to be making movies.”
Ultimately, we don’t know whether Soderbergh will keep using AI beyond these two projects, but experimenting with new tech has been the director’s calling card for ages. If anyone could find practical uses of it without going out of the way to harm the industry, he would be one of those people (James Cameron has also talked up the idea of AI helping with elevating the massive VFX workloads artists are handling at any given time, not replacing or killing jobs in that process).
Stay tuned for further updates on these Soderbergh projects, as this Spanish-American War film with Moura sounds like one that could end up getting an impressive supporting cast built around the talented Brazilian actor. Also, most recently, Moura was tapped to replace Oscar Isaac in the ‘80s-set A24 vampire thriller “Flesh of the Gods,” co-starring with Kristen Stewart (produced by Adam McKay and written/directed by Panos Cosmatos).
Meanwhile, Steven Soderbergh’s latest pic, “The Christophers,” is heading to theaters this Friday.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
