Poker Face star Natasha Lyonne is embarking on a new venture that highlights the ongoing discussions surrounding the role of generative artificial intelligence in Hollywood.
Lyonne is collaborating with tech visionary and virtual reality expert Jaron Lanier for a sci-fi film titled Uncanny Valley. The screenplay, co-written by Lyonne and Brit Marling from The OA, follows a teenage girl whose ordinary life spirals when she becomes immersed in a wildly popular virtual reality game. In addition to taking on directorial responsibilities, Lyonne will also feature in the film with Marling. The film’s ambitious visual elements are being crafted by Asteria, a new production company focused on AI, co-founded by Lyonne and her partner, director and producer Bryn Mooser (known for Body Team 12 and Lifeboat).
Lyonne praised the creative synergy experienced while working with Marling and Lanier on Uncanny Valley, describing the collaboration as “endlessly inspiring.” She likened the film’s essence to the innovative spirit of the Wachowski siblings.
She elaborated, “Imagine if Dianne Wiest and Diane Keaton, at their loquacious best, decided to take a journey through The Matrix for sport, only to find themselves holding up an architectural blueprint, and you’ll have a sense of the adventure we’ve been on. Coming together as a trio with the astounding imagineers at Asteria to worldbuild this film at scale has been a synergistic dream come true.”
Asteria aims to set itself apart from other AI entertainment companies by highlighting its use of Marey, an AI model developed by the generative text-to-video startup Moonvalley. Marey is touted as a “clean” AI model, trained exclusively on licensed content for which original creators have been fairly compensated. Although Uncanny Valley currently lacks a production timeline and details about its release format—whether theatrical or streaming—its announcement occurs amidst a growing acceptance within Hollywood of collaborating with AI technologies, despite significant concerns regarding potential exploitation.
Recently, over 400 artists signed an open letter condemning OpenAI and Google for claiming a right to train their models on copyrighted materials, citing it as a matter of “national security.” Additionally, the possibility of AI replicating or replacing living actors was among the key factors that sparked a widespread strike in the industry this year.
Given that Marey is purportedly trained on compensated footage, Uncanny Valley might navigate some of the controversies surrounding AI usage in film. Nevertheless, it remains uncertain whether this production approach will resonate with audiences and whether the film has genuine potential beyond being a technological novelty.
