Denis Villeneuve shares what he’ll miss if AI takes over the filmmaking industry: “It is very moving for me”
At a special screening of his recent hit film, Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve has spoken out about the potential of AI taking over the film industry as he mourns the thing he would miss most about the world of organic creativity.
Director Denis Villeneuve has been in London, attending events at the London Film Festival. During his visit, he was part of a conversation hosted by Screen Talk and Ted Lasso actor Brett Goldstein. While sharing some of the most memorable moments from his career, including discussing the Dune scenes that were most difficult to film as he stated that the sandworm riding scene took 44 days to get right.
He also hosted a special screening of Dune: Part Two on Sunday 13th October. The movie came out earlier this year to major success as it grossed $714.4million in box offices worldwide.
As he celebrated the film and its fans, he also celebrated the movie-making world at large, discussing how he believes AI could destroy its integral spirit. To Villeneuve, technology poses a threat to the industry’s true lifeblood and spark, which is the power of organic and exciting collaboration.
“I work with tremendous artists. The thing about cinema I love the most is this collective act of creativity, where you try to make poetry … at the end of the day it is cinema, it is storytelling. It is very moving for me to make it together,” he said to fellow filmmaker Joe Wright.
He continued, “That is why, if ever one day we came up with … you can create a movie just with a computer, maybe it’s going to be interesting in some ways, but I will absolutely miss the collective act of creativity, which is so beautifully human.”
To him, the most powerful part of the film industry is the way people could together to create something, and the atmosphere that united act of making something creates on film sets worldwide. For Villeneuve, no computer could ever replicate that.
However, that’s not to say that making a film is all sunshine and rainbows. The director discussed the difficulty involved in creating any project, but especially an undertaking as large as creating the futuristic world of Dune. He said, “There’s always at least one day where I’m a shitty director, where it feels like you’re an instrument out of tune.”
In April, it was confirmed that a third Dune movie is in development, based on Frank Herbert’s Dune Messiah, a book set 12 years after the events of his first novel. However, the director wants to make it clear that he doesn’t see the films as a trilogy. Instead, he said, “First, it’s important that people understand that for me, it was really a diptych.” He explained, “It was really a pair of movies that will be the adaptation of the first book. That’s done, and that’s finished. If I do a third one, which is in the writing process, it’s not like a trilogy. It’s strange to say that, but if I go back there, it’s to do something that feels different and has its own identity.”
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