‘Behemoth!’s Humanity Gave Pedro Pascal “Tremendous Amount Of Hope” Amid AI Boom, Tony Gilroy Wants To “Blow Up AI Centers… At The Voting Box”

As Tony Gilroy and Pedro Pascal bring Behemoth! to the big screen, they’re championing the humanity of art amid an over-reliance on AI.

The writer/director and star of the Searchlight film, which premieres Dec. 4 in theaters, discussed the movie’s “fight for humanity” and whether artificial intelligence can replace the “incredibly humanizing element of movies.”

“The experience of shooting this movie definitely injected me with a tremendous amount of hope,” Pascal told Vanity Fair. “We weren’t making money on this movie. Nobody was. And you had the most expensive people involved in this film because of their talent and their experience. So there was just this purity of love in the work from every single department, and that was incredibly contagious.”

The Golden Globe-nominated actor added, “There are other movies this year that I think in their own way, movies that I’ve seen this year that I love so much, that fight for humanity and the storytelling. So I think that there is a sort of pushback that could be really, really thrilling as far as [creativity] is concerned, as far as politics is concerned. We want to be human beings and we want to be connected to one another and we want to tell each other’s stories and witness each other’s stories and we want to look after each other and all that shit. That’s my hope.”

For Gilroy, “people’s natural resistance to the robot takeover is clear” in both the film and music industries. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I really don’t. The music scene out here is the coral reef of what’s happened. It’s been dying out here for the last 15 years… It’s grooving a little bit now. I think people want humans,” he explained.

“I don’t know what’s going to come back, but this is this incredibly humanizing element of movies that’s happened,” added Gilroy. “Can it be replaced by AI? Probably, quite shockingly, simply. There’s probably an emotional amplitude knob on some f—ing algorithm, but this movie is organic.”

The 2x Oscar nominee recommended we “blow up the AI centers, man,” before clarifying, “I don’t mean to blow them up. I mean blow them up at the voting box. Go and vote and blow them up.”

In Behemoth!, premiering Dec. 4 in theaters, Pascal stars as cellist Alex Serian, a former child prodigy who returns home to Los Angeles to compose film scores and reconnect with his family.

Written and directed by Gilroy, the Searchlight Pictures film also stars Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Will Arnett, Hank Azaria, Margarita Levieva and Matthew Lillard.