The latest celebrity to endorse an AI studio? Antonio Banderas.
The Oscar-nominated actor will star as Hernán Cortés in Utopai Studios‘ “Cortés,” a new feature directed by Paul Mignot (“Vaincre ou mourir”) and written by fellow Oscar nominee Nicholas Kazan (“Reversal of Fortune”). The film is currently in production in Paris and focuses on Banderas’ Cortés as a glory-hungry soldier in 1519 who leads an expedition to the Yucatán.
“After landing on the coast of what is now Mexico, he meets Marina, an enslaved Indigenous woman and gifted linguist who becomes indispensable to his advance,” the film’s logline reads. “As Cortés turns fragile alliances, faith and fear into instruments of conquest, Marina watches him transform from a daring outlaw into a self-anointed messiah.”
The film is a co-production between Utopai and Ex Machina Studios, a new production company dedicated to “advancing episodic and feature-length cinema through the ethical, artist-first integration of artificial intelligence.” Both studios will co-finance the film; Utopai will lead sales and distribution in the U.S., Canada, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, while Ex Machina will lead sales and distribution across most of Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand.
“Cortés is exactly why we built Utopai Studios,” Cecilia Shen, Utopai’s co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “Our job is to build the production around that vision. Nicholas has written an extraordinary screenplay, Paul has a clear cinematic point of view and Antonio brings the humanity needed at the center of it. We want to give them the ability to make the film they set out to make.”
“A historical epic works best if you believe the people at the center of it,” added Marco Weber, the CEO and co-founder of Ex Machina, a former co-CEO of Utopai and a producer on “Cortés.” “Antonio gives us a Cortés who can be commanding, complicated and deeply human, while Paul has a clear vision for the brilliant screenplay that Nick wrote. I couldn’t be more excited about the exceptional team we have put together and to bring the elements together for some breathtaking world-building in a film that feels both epic and intimate.”
Banderas is the latest Hollywood veteran to align themselves with an AI-focused company, a stamp of approval that comes as the film industry remains divided over the technology’s presence in production workflows.
“Cortés” was one of the company’s first slated projects upon Utopai’s rebrand as an entertainment studio last year, though with production designer Kirk Petruccelli set to make his directorial debut instead.
Utopai has amassed an extensive slate of projects, both completely AI-generated and AI-enabled, for a fledgling studio. It is working on an AI-assisted animated feature-length adaptation of “The Most Serious Fart,” a 2023 children’s book written by “Not Another Teen Movie” screenwriter Mike Bender. It also partnered with the Chinese production company Huace to produce a fully AI-generated adaptation of “Journey to the West: The Lost Five Hundred Years,” an origin story of the 1592 Chinese mythological book. “Cortés,” “The Most Serious Fart” and the live-action feature “Half Moon’ are set for release sometime next year.
Banderas is coming off his turn as Anthony Bourdain’s mentor José Vatel in A24’s “Tony.” He is repped by NuCo Media Group and Greenberg Glusker.