{"id":526293,"date":"2026-04-12T04:40:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T04:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/526293\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T04:40:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T04:40:07","slug":"im-just-not-threatened-by-it-world-of-reel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/526293\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m Just Not Threatened by It\u201d \u2014 World of Reel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Listen, Steven Soderbergh has always been a risk taker. This is the same guy who mainstreamed the indie film movement with \u201cSex, Lies, and Videotape.\u201d The same man who shot films on iPhones, stripped down production models, and has jumped between studio and micro-budget work. His career has been defined by risk.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Which is why I wasn\u2019t surprised by Soderbergh\u2019s now controversial comments from the past week, where he announced an upcoming movie tackling the Spanish-American War, starring Wagner Moura, that will \u201cuse a lot of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">However, in a new interview with <a href=\"https:\/\/variety.com\/2026\/film\/news\/steven-soderbergh-the-christophers-star-wars-ben-solo-movie-controversial-ai-comments-1236713201\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Variety<\/a>, Soderbergh is actually doubling down. <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">Soderbergh\u2019s attitude toward the backlash is, to put it mildly, unconcerned. When asked about criticism of his AI embrace, he responds: \u201cI\u2019m just not threatened by it. I\u2019m only scared of things I don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">For Soderbergh, AI is not an existential crisis\u2014it\u2019s an unfamiliar instrument that he intends to learn, test, and potentially exploit creatively. In his own words, \u201cMy job is to deliver a good movie, period.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">No, really\u2014Soderbergh is genuinely confused at the intensity of the reaction to his comments. When he first learned about the controversy, with a friend repeating his words back to him, his reaction? \u201cWhere\u2019s the smoke here?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">In his view, AI simply replaced what would once have required expensive VFX pipelines: <\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">\u201cTen years ago, I would have needed to engage a visual effects house at an unbelievable cost\u2026 No longer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">There needs to be some context here. What went unmentioned in many of the think pieces is that Soderbergh is recalibrating creatively after the underperformance of \u201cBlack Bag,\u201d which, despite critical acclaim, struggled at the box office, prompting him to rethink his approach.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\" style=\"white-space:pre-wrap;\">He now says he wants to make films with \u201cscale\u201d and something that can be \u201cevent-ized\u201d\u2014a notable shift for a director often associated with lean, experimental storytelling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen, Steven Soderbergh has always been a risk taker. This is the same guy who mainstreamed the indie&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-526293","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-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}