Will Smith Completely Changed The Way One of Hollywood's Hottest Directors Creates Stories

1 week ago 12

Published May 23, 2026, 11:19 AM EDT

Summary

Collider's Steve Weintraub chats with Boots Riley for I Love Boosters.
In this conversation, Riley calls out the harmful and misleading AI culture and data centers.
He also discusses his approach to filmmaking, with engagement versus structure, mixing politics, absurd humor, and music, and the real-world inspiration behind I Love Boosters.

Writer-director Boots Riley returns to the big screen for I Love Boosters, his latest genre-bending satire with Neon, starring Keke Palmer, Taylour Paige, LaKeith Stanfield, and Demi Moore. With the crime comedy in theaters now, the visionary filmmaker behind Sorry to Bother You spoke with Collider’s Steve Weintraub, diving deep into AI hype culture, environmental concerns surrounding data centers, the artistic philosophy behind his storytelling, and why film doesn’t need to follow traditional formulas.

In the movie, Riley’s tale about a crew of expert shoplifters comes to life in candy colors and sharp wit, as Corvette (Palmer) leads the charge against the thieving, ruthless fashion maven, Christie Smith (Moore). After Smith swipes Corvette’s designs, she and her stylish team strike the mogul's couture boutiques for what Paige’s Mariah coins “Triple F” — fashion-forward filanthropy. I Love Boosters also features Naomi Ackie, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, Don Cheadle, and Will Poulter.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Riley discusses how he blends political commentary, absurd humor, and emotional storytelling into something entirely unique. He also explains why audience engagement matters more than structure, how music influences his filmmaking style, and the real-world architectural inspiration behind I Love Boosters. Don’t miss this fascinating conversation with one of modern cinema’s most original voices in the video or the transcript below.

Boots Riley Slams AI Hype

The filmmaker calls out the AI illusion, insisting, "It's not doing what they're saying it does."

sorry-to-bother-you-lakeith-stanfield-boots-riley

COLLIDER: You need to make more movies.

BOOTS RILEY: Thank you, man. I hope to.

I need it to happen. Also, if you don't mind, if you could write a script that really just goes to town on data centers, I would really appreciate it.

RILEY: Okay. Yeah. No, it's crazy. These big buildings in the middle of… We’ve got one in Oakland, and it's just this big goliath, and you're like, “That's where the internet is.”

It's also where they're drinking all the natural water of our planet, with no thought about what's going to happen in 10 years. Zero.

RILEY: There was one that had to do with the data center, but the whole point was, “Welp! Whatcha gonna do?”

By the way, and I don't mean to bring this in, but everyone is so short-sighted on the tax revenue of the immediate need of money, but are not thinking five steps ahead on what these things will do to the environment and everything.

RILEY: And meanwhile, it's very powered by the idea of AI, which is some fake shit anyway. Like, it's not doing what they're saying it does. I know a couple of people who were on the crew but signed NDAs and told me personally that that Google VO stuff, they just shot that. That was shot with actors being like, “We are AI. We don't exist.” Now, maybe they figured out some way where some things are AI, where they're editing from here to here, or something. I don't know. Who knows? Maybe they did something so they could “technically” do that.

And then the Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise, it turns out that a company shot that against green screen, the fight part, and the rest of it is regular video game stuff that has existed for 15 years. So, you got trillions on the line, and people are lying. But part of that is building the data centers, which, even if they don't use it for AI, they'll figure out something else to use it for.

By the way, I think we can all agree, when it comes to AI, please solve getting CO2 out of the atmosphere, medical stuff…

RILEY: Some of that stuff, if it does that, that's not even AI. That's just calculating.

Exactly.

RILEY: That’s the stuff that things have been doing and all of that kind of stuff. But they're lumping everything under AI to get money, and they're building out to say that they have the ability to do these things.

Totally. I'm going to switch gears. We're both on the same page about this.

Boots Riley Uses 'The Pursuit of Happyness' Philosophy to Subvert Expectations

"I'm trusting how I feel about it. I'm trusting how this will work viscerally."

I really need you to explain it to me: how the F do you do what you do in terms of the way you tell stories that are both original and thought-provoking and funny? You have this weird blend, and I don't know how you do it.

RILEY: It's just the trajectory of the art that I've created. Again, I think that's the key: I don't know how I do it. I do, while I'm selling these things, I end up articulating something that's a close proximity to what I do, but the amount of iterations… So, Sorry to Bother You is my first film, but it wasn't the first that I made. By that point, I'd been doing stuff for 20-something years with a similar idea. We got accused of not being quote-unquote political because a lot of our stuff was funny, and you could dance to it.

All of my philosophies around that kind of developed, and even with that, I'm not doing this calculation of, “This is how you do it.” It's more that I'm trusting how I feel about it. I'm trusting how this will work viscerally and what will this do? And even with a song, I'm not sticking to, “Oh, it's supposed to be 16 bars, blah blah blah.” No, “This one feels like it needs to be 24 bars. This one feels like it needs to be 21. Oh, it's 21? That's weird. We're going to have to add some extra shit right there and do this other thing if we're going to do that.” So, it's kind of The Pursuit of Happyness philosophy. You seen that movie?

I have. Will Smith?

RILEY: You know that inn where Will Smith's character goes in for an interview, and he doesn't have a shirt on, and the interviewer is like, “Well, what would you say if you were me and somebody came in here without a shirt?” He said, “Well, I'd say, ‘Better be some damn good pants.’” And so for me, it's like that. I can do whatever I want as long as I have this other thing, and whatever the “whatever I want” and the “other thing” is, it's so I know what people are expecting, and I can play with that. That's actually one of the tools. But it's also what I think will hit them harder, what I think will make them more curious, what I think will make them more engaged. All those sorts of things.

If I have a sad person, and I’m playing violins, you know, automatically, the film is telling you they're sad. Are you feeling sad? I don't know. However, you go on automatic, and then you start engaging with the film in a different way, and not in the way that I want. So, I might have them sad and have some dissonant music playing, going the opposite way, and then you're engaging. You might even be like, “Why are they doing this?” You know? But then it's my job to figure out how to push you away and pull you in at the same time, and have that different kind of engagement.

So, the answer to your question is, I don't know. But I think film needs a little bit more… Still, always the question for me is, “Does it work? If this isn't working, how do I get it to work?” And what is working for me is something that is based on how the movie is making me viscerally react, and if it's keeping me engaged with the story and wanting to see what's happening next. I don't think there's a right and wrong way to do things. I think that a lot of people get taught, like, “Here's how you have a career, so here's the formula.”

One of the things that I admire about your work is that film is still a very young art form, and it doesn't have to follow the normal structure of what has come before. There are ways of pushing. Not all of it will work, but some of it will.

RILEY: And music is an older art form, and you definitely don't need to follow that structure. In fact, the more that you do, the more I'm not interested.

Completely.

Boots Riley Talks New Prime Video Series 'I'm a Virgo' About a 13-Foot Tall Man Living in Oakland

Riley also discusses the practical effects used to bring his 13-foot protagonist to the screen and some of the cameos fans can expect to see.

Boots Riley Wants to "Boost" the Guggenheim

Let me switch to something else. In the spirit of the film, if you could boost one historical monument or world-famous artifact and put it in a community center so more people could appreciate it, what would you boost?

RILEY: Oh, that's a good one. Probably something architecturally amazing.

I threw a fastball.

RILEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A monument. Well, I want it to be useful, so it'd probably be a building. I’d want it to be something that people access and go inside. This is somewhat related to how we have a piece of architecture in the movie that is based on something real, which is a fake mall version of the Guggenheim. So, probably it's something like some museum like that, that we fill with our own stuff and the community uses for what they want. But some building, like the Guggenheim, that goes up and around in a circle.

I Love Boosters is in theaters now.