Director Shawn Levy has wrapped and is in post-production on “Star Wars: Starfighter.”
The much-anticipated film, starring Ryan Gosling, Amy Adams, Matt Smith, Mia Goth and Aaron Pierre, doesn’t it theaters until May 28, 2027.
“I’m in the beautiful sanctity of the edit room,” Levy told me at the Breakthrough Prize Ceremony on Saturday. “We don’t come out until next year, and so it’s a rare movie where I don’t have a release date looming. So I’m in the dark quiet of the edit room finding the best possible shape for the film.”
From the sound of it, AI will not be a significant tool in finding that shape. “To date, I’ve not incorporated AI in any meaningful way in any phase of my storytelling process, but I have no doubt that in the course of my career we will see its integration,” Levy said.
A prolific director and producer, Levy’s projects have included “Stranger Things,” “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “All the Light We Cannot See” and “The Adam Project.”
“To the point that many smarter people than I have made, it’s about integrating these technologies responsibly and with still the primacy of the creative voice and not a potential replacement for that voice because I think that what you get from creative voice and vision is singular and irreplicable, but if we can use these emerging AI capacities to support storytelling in still a kind of creative and human first workflow then I think it’s something to embrace, not fear.”
Regulation is key, Levy said. “I spend a part of everyday trying to increase my fluency around the regulatory options surrounding [AI],” he said. “I think it’s going to be essential, but I think to hide our heads in the sand and pretend that it’s not going to be not just an emergent but an essential part of our lives, not just filmmaking lives, [but] lives lives, I think that would be naive and foolish.”
In a separate interview at the Breakthrough Prize Ceremony, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he believes AI will benefit Hollywood more than hurt the industry as critics of AI worry that the technology will result in job cuts, illegal use of IP and more.
“I think people really care about the human beings behind the stories and the art and the creative work that matters so much, so my instinct is it’s going to go the other way and people will care more about humans and more about human creators in the future, not less,” he said.
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