Actress and filmmaker Natasha Lyonne (Poker Face, Russian Doll) is making her directorial debut with Uncanny Valley — a video game-set project that will blend live action and AI.
The Big Picture: By making a movie using AI, Lyonne — a well-respected artist in Hollywood’s creative community — could chart a path for how the film industry might use the cutting-edge (yet controversial) tech in a way that ethically and humanely expands a filmmaker’s vision.
Behind the Scenes: Uncanny Valley is the first movie to come out of Lyonne and Bryn Mooser’s AI studio, Asteria.
The film, which is “centered on a teenage girl who becomes unmoored by a hugely popular AR video game in a parallel present,” was written by Lyonne and Brit Marling (The OA, A Murder at the End of the World). Both women will also star.
The game elements will be designed by renowned tech innovator (and infamous tech skeptic) Jaron Lanier, who was an influential thinker at Microsoft Research. He was also a consultant on Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report.
The production will use an AI system called “Marey,” developed by startup Moonvalley, which is trained exclusively on copyright-cleared data.
Since the movie is being made independently, it’s still unclear whether it will debut in theaters or on a streaming service.
End Credits: Lyonne described the project as if “Dianne Wiest and Diane Keaton, at their loquacious best, decided to take a journey through The Matrix for sport, only to find themselves holding up an architectural blueprint.” That’s pretty… wild. But it just goes to show how surreal or avant-garde AI-powered filmmaking could get. If the movie turns out great, Lyonne might potentially be the first major filmmaker of the format.
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