Life as an actor may seem exciting and glamorous, but it’s not all red carpets, Tonight Show appearances, and Oscar parties with an open bar. Sometimes you have to fight to get auditions, you wait for callbacks that never happen, and then you end up losing the role to a white guy named Chris. Despite the many hardships that human actors face and the many human actors who can’t find work, American History X director Tony Kaye still thinks it would be a good idea to turn to mankind’s greatest enemy for his next film. We’re referring, of course, to the machines.
According to Deadline, Kaye wants to hire an “Artificial Intelligent actor” to star in his next movie, which is apparently a sequel to Iranian director Ali Atshani’s 1st Born called 2nd Born. The original featured Val Kilmer and was a history-making co-production between filmmakers from both Iran and the United States. The sequel, evidently, will be about a robot, with Kaye supposedly hoping to use an actual physical machine running an AI trained on “different acting methods and techniques” instead of a CG thing. He and producer Sam Khoze are even hoping the robot will get SAG recognition, which is pretty much the point where we start to wonder if this is all a big joke.
Putting a robot in a movie is one thing, but letting the robot join SAG is just madness. Would the union have to protect the robot’s rights? And if a robot can join a union, what’s stopping it from applying for U.S. citizenship? Can a robot run for public office? We know that Disney has been developing robot presidents for years, so has this been the company’s secret plan since the beginning? We’re all seeing what happens when a self-serving maniac is in the White House, but nobody can imagine the damage a cold, emotionless machine would do with all of that power. (Just kidding, it would obviously involve forcing humanity to work in robot factories.)
Anyway, here’s a clip from 2nd Born: