Roger Avary Bets Big on AI Filmmaking — Will Moviegoers Show Up?
As AI sprints ahead, Doug Liman, Darren Aronofsky and Roger Avary are betting big—now comes the box-office test: will audiences pay to watch an AI-powered movie?
Roger Avary, who once lived at the dead center of 90s indie cinema, just jumped into the AI pool with a cannonball. The guy who co-wrote Pulp Fiction, directed Killing Zoe, and made The Rules of Attraction (still one of the best Bret Easton Ellis adaptations, with a killer against-type turn from James Van Der Beek) has spent recent years championing VHS and LaserDisc on a film-lover podcast with his old pal Quentin Tarantino. And now? He says he is making three feature films using AI—and they are headed to theaters.
From analog evangelist to AI producer
Avary says getting a traditional movie off the ground has felt impossible lately—his last feature credit was the low-budget crime thriller Lucky Day. Over the past year, he says he built a tech company around using AI to actually make films, raised the money, and went straight into production with Massive Studios.
'Just put AI in front of it and all of a sudden we’re in production on three features.'
Yes, he knows that sounds wild given his analog loyalties. That’s part of why this is so surprising.
What he is making (and when)
- A Christmas movie aiming for theaters this holiday season
- A faith-based film targeting Easter
- A 'big romantic war epic' after that
The key part: theatrical. Not just experiments on YouTube—these are meant for movie screens.
How much AI are we talking?
Massive’s team says the films blend traditional filmmaking and AI. That could mean anything from AI-assisted visuals to script passes to entire sequences. Are human actors involved? Are performances being generated or tweaked? No one is spelling that out yet, which is the murkiest—and most telling—part of all this.
Avary is not the only one
He is arriving to a movement already underway. Darren Aronofsky has been catching flak for a Revolutionary War series called On This Day...1776 that uses AI-generated actors (but not AI voices). Doug Liman says he will use AI extensively on Killing Satoshi, starring Pete Davidson and Casey Affleck, with the tech reportedly used to 'adjust' performances. And if you have seen the recent Seedance 2 AI shorts floating around, you know the tools are evolving at sprint speed.
Why this is happening (and the big question)
Studios are allergic to mid-budget risk, and even respected filmmakers are struggling to get movies greenlit. Avary’s approach is equal parts workaround and provocation. The real test is whether audiences will pay for something openly branded as AI-assisted—or if it only matters that the movie hits.
Short term, curiosity could sell tickets. Long term, the uncomfortable question looms: if the tech keeps accelerating, do we end up with a world where people generate movies from prompts at home?
For now, Avary’s three-pack is the boldest theatrical bet on AI yet. Whether it is the future or a flashy detour, we are about to find out.