Some of you reading this may not know the name Roger Avary, but for a while in the nineties and early 2000s, he was hugely influential. One of Quentin Tarantino’s Video Archives compatriots, he won an Oscar for co-writing Pulp Fiction and also directed the indie gem Killing Zoe. Arguably, his best movie is 2002’s The Rules of Attraction, which — along with American Psycho — is one of the definitive Bret Easton Ellis adaptations. It also featured a strikingly great against-type performance from the late James Van Der Beek.
In recent years, Avary has been better known for co-hosting the Video Archives podcast alongside his old friend Tarantino. The show is all about preserving classic film culture, with the two often singing the praises of VHS, LaserDisc and — of course — film prints over the more technologically savvy DVD, Blu-ray and 4K releases.
Which makes what he announced this week pretty surprising.
Three Feature Films Using AI — And They’re Going Theatrical
Earlier this week, while appearing on The Joe Rogan Podcast, Avary revealed that he’s currently working on no fewer than three feature films using AI as part of a new venture with Massive Studios.
On the show, Avary said he’s found it almost impossible to get a traditional movie going (his last credit was the low-budget crime flick Lucky Day). But over the last year, he says he built a tech company using AI to make films and raised enough capital to go straight into production.
As he put it, “Just put AI in front of it and all of a sudden we’re in production on three features.”
The first is supposedly a Christmas movie coming to theaters this holiday season. That’ll be followed by a faith-based film targeting Easter, and then a “big romantic war epic.”
The key word here? Theatrical.
Massive’s X account says the films will blend traditional filmmaking and AI, but there’s no word yet on exactly how deep the AI integration goes. Are actors involved? Is AI handling visuals? Script polish? Entire sequences? That part’s still murky.
Avary Isn’t Alone
He’s not the only director leaning into AI either.
Darren Aronofsky recently caught heat for his AI-driven Revolutionary War series On This Day…1776, which uses AI-generated actors (though not AI voices). Doug Liman has also said he’ll be using AI extensively on his Bitcoin movie Killing Satoshi, starring Pete Davidson and Casey Affleck, with AI reportedly being used to “adjust” performances.
And if you’ve seen the recent Seedance 2 AI shorts floating around online, you know the tech is evolving at a breakneck pace.
Is This the Future — Or a Gimmick?
Avary isn’t wrong about one thing: it’s harder than ever to get a movie greenlit the traditional way. Mid-budget films are a nightmare to finance, and even established filmmakers are struggling.
So you can’t really blame him for trying a new approach.
But here’s the real question — is this something audiences will actually pay to see? If people know a movie is heavily AI-assisted, does that change the appeal? Or does it not matter at all if the final product is good?
And longer term… are we heading toward a world where everyone just generates their own movies from prompts, potentially cutting filmmakers out of the equation entirely?
It’s a weird moment for the industry. The tech is moving fast. Maybe too fast.
Time will tell.
But what do you think — would you go see an AI-assisted Roger Avary movie in theaters?
