Gossip Goblin Takes AI Filmmaking To Theaters. Will Followers Pay For It?

Zack London already knows how to get people to watch his films for free. The filmmaker known online as Gossip Goblin says he has built an audience of about four million around a science-fiction universe of modified bodies, predatory corporations and humanity’s habit of engineering its own decline.

On Tuesday, London and Edward Saatchi, CEO of Fable, the film’s co-producer, released the first theatrical trailer for Gods Don’t Give Gifts, an R-rated anthology feature made using generative AI that opens on fewer than 1,000 U.S. screens on December 4, according to Fable. The trailer is expected to run before films in theaters in Los Angeles, New York and other cities starting this weekend.

Saatchi is submitting the film for consideration for the Best Animated Feature Oscar.

“I built a story universe where transhumanism has arrived, the body is upgradable, memories are merchandise, and consciousness itself can be transferred from one body to another,” London wrote in a director’s statement for the film. “Then I asked the question: what do people actually do in it?”

His answer runs through all four stories. “People still want love, status, relief, pleasure, belonging, escape, transcendence,” he wrote. “But the more powerful the tools become, the further those cravings drift from the limits that once gave them shape.”

The more immediate test is commercial. London has spent years turning strange short-form films into millions of views online. Now he and Fable have to find out whether some of those viewers will buy a ticket.

London and Saatchi discussed that test with me in a joint video interview; Saatchi followed up by email and text.

Saatchi thinks the outcome may depend on how audiences classify the film. “If people think of this like a normal movie, then it should actually do quite well,” he says. If they treat it as an AI experiment, he expects many to wait and watch it on YouTube.

Reach is something Gossip Goblin already has. Conversion is the part nobody has proved.

ForbesGossip Goblin Wants His Films To Outlast The AI LabelBy Maureen Kerr