Natasha Lyonne Partners With Jaron Lanier to Make AI-Hybrid Film

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.