Two AI-enabled films are to screen in US cinemas next year

Both made using generative AI, Alex Proyas’s Heaven and Roger Avery’s Paradise Lost are set to appear in US cinemas in 2027.

We’ve been told for some variation of ‘AI is here, get used to it’ for some time now. But in 2027, we may finally get to see that argument put to the test.

Two movies, both made with generative AI, and both coming from somewhat well known filmmakers, will have US cinema releases next year. It’ll give audiences a chance to see what the future of AI-enabled movie making looks like on a big screen.

First up, there’s Alex Proyas’s Heaven, a sci-fi thriller announced earlier this year. Previously said to be a “dark satire” akin to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, it’s about a “desperate bureaucrat who decides to escape his failing life by entering a technologically perfected afterlife,” only to realise that it’s a “carefully constructed illusion with terrifying consequences.”

The second movie is Paradise Lost, an adaptation of John Milton’s epic poem written and directed by Roger Avary, co-writer of Pulp Fiction and director of Killing Zoe and The Rules Of Attraction.

There’s a connection between these two movies: Ex Machina Studios, a production company that says it’s “marrying human-centred narratives and performances to a state of the art AI-enabled tech stack” according to its website. The firm will provide the AI visuals for Avary and Proyas’s projects.

Per Deadline, Ex Machina has also secured a deal with a US cinema chain which will see Heaven and Paradise Lost – plus other films the company’s working on – in around 1,500 cinemas across several major cities.

Paradise Lost is due for release in the spring of 2027, while Heaven will follow that summer. Incredibly, neither film has even begun production yet; Deadline reports that both projects are “currently casting”. That gives Avary and Proyas a matter of months to make their scripts into viewable reality – a process made simpler, we suppose, when scenes are generated by typing in a few prompts.

Proyas and Avary have both struggled to get these projects off the ground elsewhere. Proyas, who previously made The Crow (1994), the superb Dark City (1998) and 2004’s I, Robot (pictured above), hasn’t directed a feature since 2016’s Gods Of Egypt, a high-profile misfire.

Avary’s career, meanwhile, was marred by his imprisonment in 2009, though he’s directed a couple of projects since, including 2019’s Lucky Day – a crime thriller and quasi-sequel to Killing Zoe.

Will audiences embrace at least one of these very different movies? It’s certainly a chance for US cinema-goers to vote with their wallets, to borrow a well-worn cliche.

We’ll keep you posted on any potential release in UK cinemas.