Gal Gadot said the contract for “Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi” took six months to negotiate, the longest she has worked on.
She said SAG approached her lawyers for pointers on updating its own agreements to protect other actors.
The $70 million film was shot in a bare warehouse, with its sets and lighting generated by AI.
“Wonder Woman” star Gal Gadot took on a role in a Bitcoin thriller produced with artificial intelligence tools despite her fears of the technology, she told the Happy Sad Confused podcast.
“I am afraid of AI, but I am going to be afraid and look away? No,” the actor said, in comments reported by Variety. “The train has left the station. You’re going to work with it or be out of the game completely. I am trying to make the best of it and protect what I can protect.”
Gadot’s lawyers went over the contract with a fine-tooth comb in order to “protect” her from AI, she said. “This was the longest contract I have ever worked on,” Gadot said of “Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi,” noting that her legal team took six months to “go through every scenario we could think about as far as the AI component of it.”
“The AI component in this movie is for sets and the lighting,” Gadot explained, noting that her performance is “all me” and that she “did not want AI to have anything to do with my performance.” Her lawyers focused on that element of her contract to such an extent that, “SAG called my lawyers to ask for pointers to update the SAG contract to protect other actors,” she said.
“Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi” is a $70 million thriller helmed by “The Bourne Identity” director Doug Liman, focusing on the hunt for Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator. Gadot co-stars alongside Casey Affleck, Pete Davidson and Isla Fisher, in a plot that moves across continents and some 200 locations—though none of the actors were filmed on location.
Instead the cast worked inside a former car showroom lined with gray screen, nicknamed the gray box, with every set and lighting setup generated afterwards. Producer Ryan Kavanaugh has said shooting it conventionally would have cost more than $300 million, and puts the saving at over $200 million, according to Variety.
Gadot compared the result to theater, since the warehouse held little beyond the actors. “It felt like a pure art form of creating a movie,” she said. Without lighting setups to wait through, shooting ran for 10 hours at a stretch: “We would film on and on and on.”
She has not seen any of it. “I haven’t seen a single shot,” she said. “We’ll see. It’s crazy.”
A studio thriller on the subject of crypto is itself a relatively novel affair. Crypto has spent most of its screen life in indie productions and direct-to-video crime capers, and where it does turn up in mainstream films it is usually attached to criminals or to characters the audience is meant to dislike. That said, the tide seems to be shifting, with “Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi” joining Netflix’s currently-in-production crypto romantic comedy “One Attempt Remaining” in a race to the screen.
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