Steven Soderbergh is directing a Spanish-American War drama starring Wagner Moura, and he's said the film will use "a lot of AI" in production. The 1898 conflict is the setting - a period piece requiring significant visual reconstruction of late 19th century ships, uniforms, Cuban locations, and Havana architecture.
No specifics on what the AI involvement covers. Could be VFX pipeline work, period-accurate background generation, crowd simulation, or post-production tools. What's notable is that Soderbergh didn't hedge: this isn't a film quietly using AI while the studio stays quiet about it. He said it publicly.
Soderbergh's credits include Traffic, Erin Brockovich, and the Ocean's franchise. When directors at his level openly commit to AI production tools on a prestige project, the industry conversation moves past "will major films use AI?" to the more interesting question of which jobs and workflows change first.
Hollywood's 2023 strikes - both the Writers Guild and SAG-AFTRA - resulted in contracts with specific AI protections covering actor likenesses and writer credit. Those protections don't ban AI from production pipelines. What Soderbergh's project will show, once it's in production, is what "heavy AI use" actually looks like when it's not being obscured. Wagner Moura previously starred in Narcos and Pablo LarraÃn's Spencer. No release date has been announced.