For any cinephile living in London, the Prince Charles Cinema is more than just a venue in England’s capital; it’s an institution that celebrates the love for cinema, especially for independent films, that all its patrons share. Most recently, however, the beloved cinema was involved in a significant controversy regarding AI-generated movies.
The Backstory
The use of Artifical Intelligence (AI) is a topic that is becoming more and more of a discussion, as evidenced with the recent WGA (Writer’s Guild of America) and SAG (Screen Actors Guild) strikes, and that seems to pose a significant threat to the future of cinema and filmmaking as a whole.
On 17th June, The Prince Charles Cinema announced that on 23rd June, it would be hosting the premiere of The Last Screenwriter, a film that credited ChatGPT 4.0 for the screenplay and was advertised as such with an original headline promoting it as the first ever feature film written by AI. During the day, the cinema removed the tweet that sparked the controversy as well as social media posts that promoted the film, but The Last Screenwriter remained listed on their website, although tickets were unavailable to purchase.
A day later, the Prince Charles Cinema announced that they took the decision not to go ahead with the screening. A statement on their social media channels that also addressed the feedback received in terms of the “strong concern held by many of our audience in the use of AI in the place of a writer which speaks to a wider issue within the community.”
It is also interesting that the venue chosen for the first screening of The Last Screenwriter was not any London cinema but, instead, the Prince Charles specifically. The latter is known by film lovers as a cinema that specializes in showing notable older films with a rotating programme that varies between cult cinema, arthouse, and classic films, with some recent Hollywood releases too. Most notably, it is also one of the very few independent cinemas in central London, and thus is often associated with the ongoing struggle of cinemas closing down and struggling to survive in the era of streaming giants. Prince Charles’ longstanding reputation might have played a part in the venue choice for this screening as well as in the controversy that followed.
The Backlash
Needless to say, Prince Charles Cinema’s decision to have a screening of The Last Screenwriter—even if it was not a public one—was not met with positive reactions from moviegoers and cinephiles who had been fans of the Central London cinema for years. On the contrary, the backlash that followed it was significant and widespread, with film fans across the country calling out the cinema for its controversial choice that seems to go directly against the values of championing independent cinema that the Prince Charles Cinema is known to uphold.
It is safe to say that Prince Charles Cinema made the right choice in cancelling the screening after hearing all the controversy that surrounded it, but why was it approved in the first place? Cinephiles all over London would have hoped that a cinema like this one would have had the interest of independent cinema at its heart rather than their own profit they would have gotten from this event. Instead, it seems to many that the Prince Charles Cinema attempted to have the cake and eat it too by promoting it as a private event and thus attempting to disassociate themselves from the event they accepted to host.
And why did it take mobilised public action in order to get it cancelled? Perhaps there is not so much praise to be given to the cinema if the only reason why they went back on their decision is due to the backlash from their fans rather than the principle itself. Either way, London moviegoers probably let out a sigh of relief at the news: maybe it is true that AI is coming for the future of the film industry, but at least it is clear where the public stands in this situation. This is also an excellent example of the sheer power of collective action: it was specifically thanks to the feedback received by the audience that the cinema decided to remove the screening and listen to the people who support both Prince Charles and independent cinema at large.
Cinema and AI
The threat that Artificial Intelligence poses to the cinema industry is a significant one. And this is not a new concern either: the strikes that took over the film industry just a year ago started partially over the concerns around the use of AI in creative roles. One of the key elements in both the WGA and SAG negotiations with the AMPTP (Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers) surrounded artificial intelligence.
The new agreement reached by the WGA and AMPTP after 148 days of strikes is particularly insightful in this matter as it clarifies that Generative Artificial Intelligence is not a writer “and, therefore, written material produced by traditional AI or GAI shall not be considered literary material.” This helps safeguard the creative talents against the use of AI to replace them, which is a very real possibility, especially for writers as evident in the case of The Last Screenwriter. While this created a precedent for the use of AI in the film industry, and hopefully limits it as much as possible, it seems not to be enough as a movie written by ChatGPT is now a very real thing.
The controversy around Prince Charles Cinema, while unpleasant for those involved, was a necessary moment in cinema’s fight against AI-generated movies and very important to see the standard for what audiences want – and will demand – in the future. There is no way of predicting what will happen in the future when it comes to the role Artificial Intelligence will play in filmmaking in general and in the world of independent cinema in particular. However, if the reaction to the first movie with an AI-generated script is anything to go by, it seems that Artificial Intelligence won’t have a place in cinema just yet, or at least if moviegoers have anything to say about it.
Words by Clotilde Chinnici
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