The Lord of the Rings franchise is one of the biggest media properties in the world. It began with J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novels published between 1954 and 1955 and inspired a multi-billion-dollar film series and franchise. Peter Jackson's epic trilogy took over the world and is still adored by fans, with The Return of the King winning all 11 Oscars it was nominated for, marking the movie in the history books.
Andy Serkis, who will be returning as Gollum and directing the new movie, revealed in an interview with Variety that the new Lord of the Rings movie will be implementing AI. This movie is likely to cause controversy amongst fans and fellow filmmakers and actors who have been protesting the use of AI and fighting to maintain ownership over their property and likeness.
"There’s a little bit of de-aging for some of the characters, and machine learning is part of the process. When you think about it, in the original Lord of the Rings films, Peter created MASSIVE, which was a program that allowed 1000s of orcs to all have their own individual mindset. So that is a brilliant example of an incredible use of AI. But we’re not creating AI shots in our movie, every shot is created in a traditional way.
One of the things actually that I really wanted to do with this film was to bring back all of the great filmmaking skills, from miniatures to prosthetics, and marry them up, because that’s my taste. I like it when you mix up different filmmaking techniques."
Serkis's Hunt for Gollum movie, scheduled to be released on December 17, 2027, has a stellar cast including Ian McKellen, Jamie Dornan, Kate Winslet, Elijah Wood, Anya Taylor-Joy, Lee Pace, and Leo Woodall. One major talking point is that Sir McKellen has made his feelings on Artificial Intelligence abundantly clear and has stated that "there's enough original art around for us not to need AI." While it's unclear on the extent of the AI usage, the cast and crew may have had disagreements behind the scenes.
More to come...
Credit: MovieStillsDB
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