Soderbergh Premieres 97-Minute Lennon Film at Cannes as AI Supplies 10% of Footage
Updated
Updated · TheWrap · May 15
Soderbergh Premieres 97-Minute Lennon Film at Cannes as AI Supplies 10% of Footage
8 articles · Updated · TheWrap · May 15
Friday’s Cannes premiere put Steven Soderbergh’s 97-minute “John Lennon: The Last Interview” before audiences, built from a 165-minute radio conversation Lennon and Yoko Ono gave hours before his 1980 killing.
More than 1,000 archival photos and clips carry most of the film, while Meta-generated imagery fills abstract passages; Soderbergh said that roughly 10% of the footage was AI and the movie could not have been made without it.
The interview itself—KFRC’s only radio session with Lennon and Ono, recorded to promote “Double Fantasy”—is less revelatory than immediate, capturing Lennon reflecting on music, fatherhood, peace and the Beatles shortly before his death.
That AI use has made the documentary a Cannes flashpoint, even as the review argues the film’s emotional force still rests on Lennon’s voice, songs and the tragic proximity of his final public words to his murder.
Will controversial AI visuals overshadow the poignancy of John Lennon’s final interview?
Is Soderbergh's AI-driven Lennon film a pioneering experiment or just an 'appallingly ugly' gimmick?