All posts tagged: Darren Aronofsky

The AI Debate Dominates Cannes 2026, With Stars Praising and Condemning Its Use

The AI Debate Dominates Cannes 2026, With Stars Praising and Condemning Its Use

Published by Sam Flores

Soderbergh was openly talking about AI at the festival—a position that isn’t easy to take when there’s still so much backlash. “I was going to have to wear this. I’m going to be expected to speak for them or about this technology,” he says. “That’s the trade off to make the best version of this.” Others may have not been so keen to discuss it, but were forced to do so at press conferences. Jury member Demi Moore kicked it off on the first day, saying, “AI is here. And so to fight it is to fight something that is a battle that we will lose. So to find ways in which we can work with it, I think, is a more valuable path to take.” She incurred plenty of wrath on social media for it. Seth Rogen, in town for the animated film Tangle, went the other direction in his comments: “If your instinct is to use AI and skip that creative process, you shouldn’t be a writer, because you’re not writing.” Guillermo del …

At Vanity Fair’s Cannes Dinner, Tetou Snaps Back to Life as Darren Aronofsky, Chloé Zhao and Jordan Firstman Hold Court

At Vanity Fair’s Cannes Dinner, Tetou Snaps Back to Life as Darren Aronofsky, Chloé Zhao and Jordan Firstman Hold Court

Published by Sam Flores

The world of The White Lotus Season 4 also descended on Tetou, making the two-hour pilgrimage from their set in Saint-Tropez to Cannes on their only day off just in time for dinner. This season’s plot, in a small “m” meta way, unfolds against the backdrop of the Cannes Film Festival. Guests enjoyed luxury skincare gifts by Niance Switzerland Saskia Lawaks Its producer, David Bernad, and the actor he cast as a producer, Charlie Hall — the son of Julia Louis-Dreyfus — were accompanied by AJ Michalka (one half of aughts Disney Channel sister band Aly & AJ), Chloé Bennet, and Marissa Long, who like her character, is a Cannes ingénue making a first, fateful debut, which made the evening feel even more like a White Lotus dress rehearsal. Source link

Darren Aronofsky to Get 2026 Locarno Film Festival Honorary Leopard

Darren Aronofsky to Get 2026 Locarno Film Festival Honorary Leopard

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Locarno Film Festival will celebrate American filmmaker Darren Aronofsky with its Honorary Leopard, the Pardo d’Onore, presented by Manor, at its 79th edition this summer, organizers said on Tuesday. Lauding Aronofsky as a “visionary,” the festival said he will receive the homor on Friday, Aug. 14 on the Swiss city’s Piazza Grand. He will also present two of his films as part of the festival, namely The Fountain (2006) and Mother! (2017). “With era-defining films like π (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), the Venice Film Festival award winner The Wrestler (2008), Black Swan (2010), Noah (2014), and The Whale (2022), for which Brendan Fraser was deservedly awarded best actor at the Academy Awards, Darren Aronofsky has carved out a space in contemporary cinema that defies tidy categorization,” Locarno said. “By turns provocative, spiritual, and formally daring, his films have for more than a quarter century probed the outer limits of faith, desire, and obsession.” Locarno concluded that Aronofsky would receive the honor in recognition of “his singularity as an artistic force.” Said Giona …

A Dirty Word No More: Why Celebrities Are Finally Openly Talking About Their AI Interests

A Dirty Word No More: Why Celebrities Are Finally Openly Talking About Their AI Interests

Published by Sam Flores

Tye Sheridan hasn’t kept his interest in AI under wraps at all. He was one of the first in Hollywood to explore the possibilities when he and Nikola Todorovic cofounded AI tech company Wonder Dynamics way back in 2016. At the time, Sheridan, known for his work in sci-fi films like Ready Player One and the X-Men franchise, was telling agents, managers, and anyone else in Hollywood who’d listen that they should educate themselves about AI. “It’s coming. It’s going to be a big part of our industry,” he remembers saying. “And some people would kind of laugh because they thought it sounded so science fiction.” It was after ChatGPT launched in 2022 that Hollywood (and the rest of society) realized the possibilities. By 2023, Sheridan and Todorovic launched Wonder Studio, an AI tool for animating, lighting, and composing CG characters in a live-action scene. They’ve been intentional about using AI in an additive way, not to replace creative talent like actors. “We spend a lot of time working on staying on the good side …

With Sam Altman’s OpenAI Closing Sora, Will AI Still Change Hollywood?

With Sam Altman’s OpenAI Closing Sora, Will AI Still Change Hollywood?

Published by Daniella Wilson

[Some spoilers follow for the current seasons of The Comeback and Paradise] The new season of The Comeback, in addition to heralding the return of one of the great annoying-watchable characters in premium cable television, also introduces an element we’ve yet to see dramatized in comedies: AI as plot device. Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish returns after many years away to find that television, or at least a certain kind of commoditized fast-streaming television, can now be written largely by machine. The show’s cringe-comedy dystopia dances on satire’s edge; are we to laugh at the replacement of human slop or fear what else could be taken over? Either way, Kudrow and her fellow executive producer Michael Patrick King leave one truth unchallenged: computers can already do plenty of creative jobs. As the season progresses this sends human writers into a tailspin (“I am just trying to get me and my kids out of this town before it explodes,” Abbi Jacobson’s showrunner character says in an epic rant) and a whole industry into a precarious state. Of course whether said industry actually faces …

Darren Aronofsky’s AI YouTube Series

Darren Aronofsky’s AI YouTube Series

Published by Daniella Wilson

“Soup not slop.” Such is Darren Aronofsky’s stated intention for On This Day… 1776, a shortform YouTube series recreating pivotal Revolutionary War-era moments with SAG voice actors and AI visuals courtesy of Google DeepMind — and were you to catch a thumbnail for its trailer on a social media scroll, you might initially presume he’s succeeded. Its topic is respectably weighty — a far cry from the cruel and puerile jokes generative AI has so often been used for, like that 2025 video of Trump literally dropping shit on protesters. Its sets and costumes appear, from a distance, to evoke prestige projects like John Adams or Franklin. Its faces are realistic enough to pass muster, at least some of the time. But keep watching for more than a few seconds, and it quickly becomes apparent that slop is slop, no matter how it’s gussied up. On This Day positions itself as a well-funded, high-profile, apparently good-faith effort to demonstrate how AI might be deployed as a tool to enhance rather than replace human artistry. Instead, …

An AI Revolutionary War Series? Darren Aronofsky and Google Say Yes

An AI Revolutionary War Series? Darren Aronofsky and Google Say Yes

Published by Daniella Wilson

Benjamin Franklin and The Battle of Brooklyn — in AI? That’s the premise of an intriguing, provocative new series that Darren Aronofsky is producing via his AI-focused venture Primordial Soup. Drawing on the tech of Google DeepMind, with which the company has a deal, Primordial Soup is dramatizing the scenes from some of the Revolutionary War period’s most pivotal moments and releasing them on Time’s YouTube channel. Titled On This Day… 1776, the short-form series will see each episode focus on a different key moment from that crucial year. The fact-based narratives will rely on SAG voice actors and AI visuals —  a “combination of traditional filmmaking tools and emerging AI capabilities,” the companies said in a statement. The hook? Each episode will drop on the 250th anniversary of its occurrence. The debut episode centers on George Washington’s raising of the Continental Union Flag in Somerville, Mass., to boost the colonists’ morale; the second has Benjamin Franklin prodding a newly arrived Thomas Paine to give voice to common sense, leading to a pamphlet that was in a way …