{"id":279114,"date":"2026-02-11T18:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/279114\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T18:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T18:34:09","slug":"harmony-korine-loves-ai-and-is-skeptical-about-a-new-spring-breakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/279114\/","title":{"rendered":"Harmony Korine Loves AI and Is Skeptical About a New Spring Breakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHarmony Korine<\/a> doesn\u2019t do anything by the book. In fact, he doesn\u2019t even read books.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, I haven\u2019t read a book in two or three decades,\u201d Korine says, not proudly but matter-of-factly, but maybe also a little proudly.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe iconoclastic\u00a0Gummo\u00a0and\u00a0Spring Breakers\u00a0director may be associated with earlier eras of outre cinema. But provocateurs never go away \u2014 they are just reborn as immersive artists using the latest LLMs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At 53, Korine has found himself up to a new kind of art form, or what he believes will become that, seeking to create cinema he describes as \u201cdigital drugs.\u201d The form was hinted by, but goes beyond the bounds of, his projects of the last few years like video game\/VR\/cinema mashups\u00a0Aggro Dr1ft<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Baby Invasion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Korine recently created a short-form piece set in the Miami Design District\u00a0featuring<\/a>\u00a0trippy images like astronauts and shapeshifting cat astronauts, all moving through the sunlit spaces of upscale South Florida outdoor malls while butterflies float by. And his studio EDGLRD\u00a0has a deal<\/a>\u00a0with upstart GenAI firm Runway to explore the tech further. (He also is working on\u00a0webtoons<\/a> \u2014 traditional entertainment, comparatively.)<\/p>\n

As he walked through\u00a0the South Beach offices of EDGLRD\u00a0(pronounced edgelord despite the vowel efficiencies) on a recent afternoon, Korine demonstrated how he is looking to reach for his 90\u2019s rebel-boy rep, only with late-2020\u2019s tools. Korine finds movies uninteresting (the only one he can recall seeing in 2025 was Rihanna\u2019s\u00a0Smurfs) and believes all the criticism of AI<\/a> slop deserves an eyeroll.\u00a0Instead, working on AI-driven immersive projects is what excites him, an artistic fridge cigarette to gives a break from all the noise (even if it creates some more.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso, he thinks the Bella Thorne\u00a0Spring Breakers\u00a0sequel<\/a> is ridiculous. (This interview has been edited for clarity, slightly.)<\/p>\n

\n\tSo what books have you read recently?<\/p>\n

Oh I haven\u2019t read a book in, gosh, two or three decades.<\/p>\n

Have you seen any movies that you\u2019ve liked \u2014\u00a0Sinners? Weapons?<\/p>\n

No I didn\u2019t see those. I watched\u00a0Smokey and the Bandit\u00a0recently. What did I go see in the last year? [Pauses to remember] I saw\u00a0Smurfs 2 [Rihanna\u2019s\u00a0Smurfs].\u00a0I saw that. I look at the list of nominations for awards and I\u2019ve only heard or two of them. I don\u2019t know why that is. I used to live in movie theaters. Now I don\u2019t even know who all of these people are.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve also been producing far fewer films, working instead in a kind of post-cinematic space.<\/p>\n

Yes, more post-narrative, sensory, experimental kinds of entertainment.<\/p>\n

And AI.<\/p>\n

Yes of course.<\/p>\n

Many filmmakers say it\u2019s push-button and regurgitative, and they have plenty of evidence, though your AI work definitely contains a distinct vision. What do you say to those who argue the only thing it can really create is slop \u2014 just synthesize what\u2019s already been done?<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s the very beginning. We\u2019re just\u00a0at the point of understanding what we\u2019re capable of with it and then is there a world where the aesthetics take over and we use it in a way that\u2019s not really about the idea of realism but turning it into something more transcendent and experiential and beyond a simple narrative articulation. It\u2019s the idea of adapting it as a tool or a paintbrush.\u00a0Of course nobody wants AI slop, but that\u2019s not what it will be. AI slop works well for social and for really short-form content but the idea people are chasing now is is there a way to add emotion.<\/p>\n

The anti-AI set \u2014 the Guillermo del Toros and other directors and plenty of our readers as well \u2014 would say that sounds good but you can never really achieve that.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t\u00a0understand how anyone can say they\u2019re anti something that\u2019s potentially creative. If it\u2019s not working for you today it could work for you a year from now. Soon conversations like that won\u2019t even matter. It\u2019s like discussing the Internet. It already is. But I also think you should not even try to use it to imitate moves or traditional narratives or classic IP. It\u2019s a losing battle. You use the instrument to create its own form, its own logic, its own world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meaning we\u2019re\u00a0getting thrown off because people are trying to map AI onto traditional art forms.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to be a spokesman for AI but personally I am trying to create something in a specific way, something that moves beyond traditional media or content, and what are the bounds of that, are we heading to a world even where we can share cinema telepathically. I feel like even leading with technology is a disservice; that part should almost come last. If you\u2019re leading with how it gets made people will be skeptical; if you\u2019re trying to use it to win an argument, you will lose. These things have to work on their own. \u00a0
Do you think it does right now?<\/p>\n

For me it does. My interest is pretty visual. It\u2019s like \u201cwow, I can sit at home and animate and make cartoons.\u201d It comes from a very creative place. Technology has started to parallel my dreams. This is something immediate, its own form, not a top-down language but the magic of creating something new. It\u2019s the thing I\u2019ve been chasing my whole life. It\u2019s what comes after everything. It\u2019s feeling,\u00a0emotion, something beyond logic. <\/p>\n

I do feel when you watch AI movies\u00a0\u2014\u00a0the stuff actually being made with the tools \u00a0\u2014 that it does have a little bit of that surreal post-rational aesthetic. At the Runway AI Film Festival last June all of the movies gave that kind of feeling<\/a>, like they existed in an alternate dream world.<\/p>\n

Absolutely. It\u2019s a sense of almost digital drugs. Is there a way to have entertainment that\u2019s a kind of emotional vibration? It\u2019s the idea of cinema that you can basically be inside.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s what you tried in this Miami Design District piece that just ran at Art Basel Miami Beach.<\/p>\n

Yes, an augmented experience where characters come alive in a landscape that\u2019s unlike any that exists.<\/p>\n

I feel like that same description could have been applied to Gummo and Kids [which Korine wrote]; those also were new landscapes that also were unlike any that existed on film.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s always what\u2019s driven me, trying to make something that I\u2019ve never seen before.
There are plenty of indie filmmakers who say there are always new rules to be broken within the form, you don\u2019t have to cross media. Do you think they have a point?<\/p>\n

I mean those people exist and they can spend their life doing that if they want to, that\u2019s up to them. I\u2019ve been making films since I was a little kid and all I saw was Hollywood gatekeeping and I never wanted to be a part of that. I just wanted to sit in a room and do anything I could to understand my own imagination with no dilution. And if you look back at so much of what we think of as conventional entertainment they were also radical in their time and people were so upset. But after time people consumed them and you see them everywhere.<\/p>\n

Sure, but that doesn\u2019t mean everything radical becomes popular or the standard. Every square is a rectangle, etc.<\/p>\n

No, that\u2019s true. But for me it\u2019s just following the progression of my own curiosity. We should also be asking if there is a way to have fun again, is there a way of not knowing the rules and what you\u2019re capable of, is there something that hasn\u2019t been done, is there a sound or an image or a moment to discover. My interest comes from not knowing and feeling like there\u2019s something new to find or create. <\/p>\n

Speaking of something new, I do have to ask about a piece of yours back in trad-land. There\u2019s a whole new Spring Breakers being planned by the producers [who own the rights], with Bella Thorne and Grace Van Dien and all these newer twentysomething actors. You\u2019re not involved with it. Why is that?<\/p>\n

\n\tI have no interest in it. The first movie exists, it already is what it is for me. The thought wouldn\u2019t even enter my mind to be involved. I can\u2019t imagine why you\u2019d want to make another one because it already exists.<\/p>\n

Is it a compliment people want to continue the story?<\/p>\n

\n\tNot really. It\u2019s already its own thing; there\u2019s no need for a sequel. But it\u2019s not up to me.<\/p>\n

Will you see it when it comes out?
Nah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harmony Korine doesn\u2019t do anything by the book. In fact, he doesn\u2019t even read books.\u00a0 \u201cOh, I haven\u2019t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,156686,111,139,69,145,2673],"class_list":{"0":"post-279114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-harmony-korine","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-video-games"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}