Nov. 3, 2026
Last year, I published a list of “30 Directors & Writers Taking Sides” for and against AI use in filmmaking. This stirred up a bit of debate on social media, with some notable insiders seemingly taking offense that I was even pointing out the varied opinions of Hollywood directors, producers, and actors on the topic of AI. In 2026, the debate over AI in filmmaking hasn’t ended, and now one of the top directors has weighed in with extensive thoughts on the matter.
Just a few weeks away from the release of Dune: Part Three, the film’s director, Denis Villeneuve, sat for an interview yesterday at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles to discuss the 10-year anniversary of his science-fiction film Arrival. But along the way, the conversation with Dr. Nina Beguš inevitably shifted to a discussion about artificial intelligence (AI) use in Hollywood.
“I’m a child of the digital world, using tools that David Lean didn’t have when he did Lawrence of Arabia. I’m using the power of computers to make my movies. But so far, these computers have been tools. AI cannot replace human creativity. But there are forces [and] people that think it could. It’s about the process,” said Villeneuve.
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To drive his point home further, the director brought up the recent news regarding AI and the mathematics community.
“There was this idea of the Navier-Stokes equation, an old mathematical puzzle about the mechanics of fluids, or something like that. And it’s been 100 years [that] mathematicians [have been] trying to solve the answer to this problem. The [Mount] Everest of all mathematical problems, [as] I’ve understood,” said Villeneuve. “And the new AI model was able to solve the problem in four days that they were trying to solve for 100 years. From what I understood, the mathematicians were not happy about that.”
It’s true. A number of mathematicians have gone on record openly wondering what the future of their field will be. In the face of AI tackling some of the most challenging questions in mathematics that have fueled research and development for many decades, what place do humans have? Villeneuve took the opportunity on Monday to posit his theory, using this example.
“[One mathematician] said it’s like if you think of a mountain, and we are trying for decades to climb this mountain, and right now we are at the base camp. And we start to see the summit, but the summit is still very far away. And someone comes with a helicopter and lands on top and puts a flag there, and says, ‘I got it.’ He said the problem is that it’s not the result, it’s not to put the flag there that we are looking for, it is to climb,” said Villeneuve, who is likely making a reference to the renowned mathematician Terence Tao, who used the same analogy during an interview in the February edition of The Atlantic earlier this year.
“As you’re climbing, in the process you discover a lot of things. You understand a lot of things, and you evolve as a mathematician. And this idea that it’s not the result, but the process, I think is very human,” said Villeneuve. “I think that me, as a filmmaker, if you tell me if I have the choice to create an image with a prompt, or to go in the desert with actors with a crew and to go through an adventure, well, I will learn about filmmaking. I will learn about my craft. It will evolve. I will improve as a filmmaker. It’s two different things. AI must not kill the human process.”
“The problem with AI is that it deals with the past. It deals with things that existed before. Creativity is about stepping into the unknown, into the future.”
—Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Three
However, Villeneuve isn’t naive to the tempting force-multiplier effect that AI may offer when it comes to increasingly massive film budgets.
“I think that it’s true that [AI] can be a tool of democratization that makes visual effects cheaper and available to more people. I think that it’s true that the movies are getting more and more and more expensive, and that maybe it’s a way that [AI] could help,” said Villeneuve. “Maybe tomorrow there will be someone who will direct a movie on his computer. And maybe it’s going to be an interesting movie. And the movie will have cost [the equivalent of] just three pizzas. And the studio would see that, and they will go crazy and want movies to be made like that. But I think it’s going to be—excuse my language—an avalanche of shit.”
Villeneuve’s prediction about the economics of AI in filmmaking is almost certainly accurate, especially in the genre of animation, where AI use has already begun to put human animators out of work. But his forecast on AI filmmaking from an artistic point of view is still something that some directors on the other side of the debate might take issue with.
“At the end of the day, the problem with AI is that it deals with the past. It deals with things that existed before,” said Villeneuve. “Creativity is about stepping into the unknown, into the future, which is something that only the human can do, because the AI is just reproducing what has been done. So I think that for the future of cinema, it is fundamental that it stays pure, at the core of it, human creativity.”✍︎
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Cover image: Denis Villeneuve on the set of Dune: Part Two via Warner Bros./YouTube
