Gal Gadot has defended her decision to star in an AI-assisted film, saying actors will have to learn to work with the technology or risk being “out of the game completely”.
She also made it clear that returning as Wonder Woman “doesn’t work with my life anymore at this point”.
Gadot’s forthcoming film Bitcoin was shot over 20 days on a custom-built soundstage, with AI being used to create sets and lighting that would otherwise have required conventional locations and physical production.
Directed by Doug Liman and also starring Casey Affleck, Pete Davidson, and Isla Fisher, the film follows computer scientist Craig Wright, as he tries to prove he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.
“This was the longest contract I’ve ever worked on,” she told host Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, adding that her lawyers spent six months considering possible scenarios involving AI because she “absolutely did not want the AI to have anything to do with my performance”.
She said contractual protections were negotiated to such an extent that US actors’ union SAG-AFTRA “called my lawyers to ask for pointers to update the SAG contract to protect other actors”.
open image in gallery“As far as the performances, for me, you know, it’s all me,” Gadot said, admitting however, that she was “afraid of AI” but wouldn’t let it stop her.
“I’m playing with it, and I’m learning it, and I’m trying to educate myself with it,” she said, because she feels that with AI one can either “work with it” or “be out of the game completely”.
Watch Apple TV+ free for 7 day
New subscribers only. £9.99/mo. after free trial. Plan auto-renews until cancelled.
ADVERTISEMENT. If you sign up to this service we will earn commission. This revenue helps to fund journalism across The Independent.
That said, Gadot stressed that the AI used on Bitcoin was for only “sets and for the lighting” and there was a “very broad crew and a lot of people” still working on the film.
“Essentially the experience that I had was as if we were doing theater,” said Gadot, explaining that she and the other actors performed in a “stripped down” space where “all that was left was the performance”.
“We would film nonstop because we didn’t have to wait for lighting. We would film on and on and on and on for 10 hours,” the Snow White star said.
Gadot, best known for playing Diana Prince/Wonder Woman in the DC Extended Universe, opened up about the end of her time as one of popular culture’s most recognisable female superheroes. She first played the Amazonian in Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in 2016, before starring in Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman the following year, and reuniting again for Wonder Woman 1984 in 2020. The 2017 film grossed $822m worldwide and became one of the defining female-led superhero films of its era.
Looking back, Gadot said she and Jenkins initially regarded themselves as “underdogs” and were given a relatively modest budget to “go and do your thing while everybody else is going to focus on the other guys’ film”.
open image in galleryA third Wonder Woman film was in development, but the project collapsed in December 2022 as James Gunn and Peter Safran took over the newly created DC Studios. Jenkins later disputed reports that she had simply walked away from the film, saying she was “open to considering anything asked of me” but believed there was nothing she could do to move it forward at that point.
Responding to Horowitz’s question on whether she was told that Wonder Woman would be heading in a different direction, Gadot said they “told me the opposite”.
“They were like, ‘We’re going to develop it with you, the third [film]. But I saw the way everybody else was handled,’” said Gadot, referring to Jenkins’s exit and the similarly messy departure of Henry Cavill, who had announced his return as Superman in October 2022 only to be told two months later that he would not be reprising the role.
“The Henry situation was not being handled elegantly, to say the least. Same with Patty. Was not handled elegantly,” Gadot said.
open image in galleryShe continued: “We’re all adults, and it’s all good. I’m so grateful that I got the opportunity to wear these boots and to have the character be so celebrated and be the vessel at that point of time.”
However, Gadot said that she wasn’t sure if she would “at this point in my life with four children and different schools, and all of that” take on the Wonder Woman role again.
“To check out all of them for such a long period of time, it doesn’t work with my life anymore at this point,” she said.
DC is yet to announce who will succeed Gadot as Wonder Woman, though Andor star Adria Arjona has emerged as a popular contender, after being cast in an unspecified role in Gunn’s forthcoming Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow.