Artist View’s Scott J. Jones on the New AI-Crafted Movie The Great Reset

Artist View Entertainment is known for offering clients a wide selection of movies, from action and disaster films to family-friendly and rom-com titles. The company’s president, Scott J. Jones, has always been open to new technologies and has recently picked up for distribution The Great Reset the world’s first AI-crafted photorealistic thriller. Jones talks to World Screen about how Spanish filmmaker Daniel H. Torrado used AI to create the film. While no one today knows how AI will be adopted or resisted for sure, it will be part of the filmmaking industry.

WS: How did you become involved with The Great Reset, and what appealed to you about the film?
JONES: It was a blind submission from the filmmaker, Daniel H. Torrado. I had my staff look at it, and they said, There’s a good story here. There’s always a big demand, especially in the international market, for disaster or action movies, and The Great Reset is that non-stop. The initial reaction was, I don’t know what we would do with this. But Torrado was very talented at putting this together, and we need to deal with the fact that AI will be part of our lives. I had some great conversations with him, and we decided, Let’s learn together; let’s see how far down the road we can go with this. He did all the work to get eligibility for the Academy Awards. It’s not nominated, but it’s a movie that ticks all the boxes.

This is a crazy time, to tell you the truth. Throughout my career, I have not been afraid of trying new things. In 1981, I opened the fourth video store in the city I’m from. And AI is another great example.

I was at a seminar last year, and they said it took ten years for 1 billion people to be willing to use the internet. By comparison, it took 18 months for 1 billion people to try AI. The question is where AI finds itself in the production business. In The Great Reset, you can say no actor or actress or hair and makeup person or whatever lost their job, because the only person who was involved with the project is the guy who wrote, directed and produced it. There was no room for anybody to have a job based on what was being produced, so it’s interesting.

WS: A description of the film says, “Artificial intelligence serves as an execution tool within a human-in-the-loop process: the screenplay, direction and editing remain human-driven.” Would you explain that?
JONES: All the pictures are generated by a computer. But the story is written by a human being. It’s directed and edited by a human being. So, that human being is working with the AI tool to produce this story.

WS: The actors are also AI-generated?
JONES: 100 percent.

WS: I’ve heard of shows with AI-created sets, so a channel or platform buying them only has to provide the host and the contestants. They don’t have to cover the cost of building a set because AI will do it for them.
JONES: I think there are a lot of applications like that, even for a director, who doesn’t have to be on location. He’s got a green screen, and it’s all so realistic that he can see what he has to work with. And the music side of it, that’s a whole other thing. It’s amazing how music is being generated. And we have to learn—whether it’s in film or in the music business, how will licenses work if it’s AI-generated music?

There are a lot of question marks, but the real point is that AI is going to be part of what we do. And rather than fearing it, you have to figure it out.

WS: Exactly. You said disaster movies have always had a loyal audience. When you sell The Great Reset, do you think the AI component will make it more appealing?
JONES: That’s the big question! I’m going to assume there will be a lot of curiosity around it, not only from the general viewing public but especially from tech-savvy people. It’ll be an interesting conversation to have with you after the Berlin International Film Festival and the Cannes Film Festival. Six months from now, we’ll see what we’ve learned along the way. It should be interesting because there’ll be a lot of different opinions about this, which is great. You can choose to embrace it, or you can choose to avoid it, but I believe it’s not going away.

If The Great Reset does well, the creativity will continue. It’s just another way of producing content. There are all these things going on in our world now with vertical entertainment, and who would have thought that people would buy into it? The 60- to 90-second episodes.

WS: Watching on smartphones.
JONES: Worldwide, big time. Throughout Europe and Asia, people are on their phones watching their latest drama or feature film. It’s all in our pocket.

WS: With production becoming ever more expensive, can AI help contain costs?
JONES: I would assume so, absolutely, because some things have to be generated somehow. For example, if you have the Hoover Dam exploding or a plane falling from the sky or a train crash, you’re obviously not going to have that happen in real life. AI is just a different way to generate those sequences.

WS: Are there other movies that you will be offering?
JONES: We’ve got an interesting political war drama that’s called Line of Control. It deals with the politics surrounding the invasion of Kashmir in 1993, which might be very timely. It’s a powerful film based on the best-selling book The Collaborator. It sold extremely well throughout Europe and Asia. It’s not an American-produced movie, but it’s in English, and it’s a very powerful story.

Then we’ve got a fantastic family-friendly faith-based adventure called Hazel’s Heart, set in the 1920s. It’s about three kids who get lost in a snowstorm and have to figure out how to survive through the night, when the town cannot find them. It is a powerful story that will be released domestically by Samuel Goldwyn. We just finished a movie called Love on Tap, with Alex Moffat from Saturday Night Live. It’s a really fun rom-com. So, between the faith-based movies, the disaster AI movie, the rom-com and the war movie, we try to have something for everybody.