I didn’t feel like signing up for Disney Plus so I am not one of the people watching Hamilton tonight. Probably one of the only ones. So what am I watching? Well, that’s a good question. Quite frankly, I feel like I’ve already seen everything there is to see. Hundreds of TV shows. Thousands of movies.
Sure, there are gaps. I’ve never seen The Sopranos or The Godfather trilogy (not really a fan of Gangsters). I’ve also never seen The Big Lebowski, Pulp Fiction, Dumb & Dumber, and a host of other titles that you’d probably be surprised to find out that I haven’t seen. But for the most part I feel like I’ve seen everything that I should see, everything that would be culturally relevant to see. But there is one thing I’ve never seen. Something no one has ever seen. A movie with a robot as the lead actress. But soon that’s something we all may see. Thanks to Erica; the world’s first leading robot actress.
In fact, thanks to the global pandemic that has effectively shuttered Hollywood filming with robots may be more than a cheap gimmick or a glimpse into the future. Soon it may even be a necessity.
As The Hollywood Reporter puts it, “As the industry grapples with how to reopen for production safely, one movie is proceeding with a lead actress who is immune to COVID-19 — because she’s a robot named Erica.”
Popular Mechanics provides more context for the groundbreaking project:
“Erica will star in the forthcoming sci-fi movie b, the $70 million story of a scientist who has come up with a program to ‘perfect’ human DNA (a la eugenics), which glitches and becomes dangerous, according to THR. So the scientist must help Erica, the AI organism that he’s created, escape the lab.
This story aligns with Erica’s real-world origin tale. Japanese scientists Hiroshi Ishiguro and Kohei Ogawa designed the humanoid robot to study human-computer interaction. Ishiguro is so embedded in this stuff that he’s even created an android of his own daughter in the past, which Alex Mar describes beautifully in a 2017 WIRED profile of his ingenious, yet haunting work.”
Part of the reason why I didn’t feel like signing up for Disney Plus to watch Hamilton is because it felt a little bit forced. Like its something that I had to do just because everyone else was doing it. When it comes to bandwagons I prefer to be riding shotgun, not piling into the back. Prefer to be the one identifying the trends and getting ahead of the buzz. Which is why I’ll be excited to watch b as soon as it comes out. Before everyone else catches on to just how culturally significant having a robot lead actress is. Because make no mistake about it. This could change everything.
Is filming a movie with a robot actress the Greatest Idea Ever?
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