Disney’s live-action The Lion King featured only one single real shot. Every other part of Jon Favreau’s movie used CGI. The Mouse House’s most recent live-action remakes, Snow White, for reasons that will also baffle historians someday, also opted for CGI dwarves instead of casting actual humans. Both films really stretched the concept of “live-action” and not in good ways. And yet, we almost got something even worse. Disney planned to use an AI deepfake of Dwayne Johnson’s face superimposed on a body double for the upcoming live-action Moana.
No, seriously, the studio and Johnson both thought that it was a good idea to use AI in this way and tried to make it happen.
The Wall Street Journal reports Disney came up with a way to have Johnson reprise his role as Maui the demigod in the upcoming Moana remake without having to be on set every day. The studio was going to shoot some scenes with his frequent body double, his 6’3”, 250-pound cousin Tanoai Reed. The AI company Metaphysic was then going to create deepfakes of Johnson’s face it would layer over Reed’s body for Moana. The concept was to make a “digital double” so it could double the Dwayne.
Johnson :deepest sigh ever recorded: agreed with the plan. He was totally on board with the executives. But after 18 months of legal questions and negotiations, including the issue of whether or not Disney would even own all of its own movie, the idea collapsed. As a result, none of that AI Dwayne Johnson footage will appear in the live-action Moana film.
It’s bad that Disney seriously considered this idea. It’s bad that it didn’t follow through because of legal matters rather than creative and ethical ones. But it’s good that it won’t actually happen and AI Dwayne Johnson will haunt only our dreams. (As is the fact, Disney also abandoned plans to use artificial intelligence in Tron: Ares.) It’s frustrating enough when live-action remakes don’t use live actors. Using AI versions of them would be so much worse.
Content shared from nerdist.com.