WEEKLY RECAP #93: Guadagnino Eyeing "The Aryan Papers", "Golden" Scrapped & MORE!

2/2/25 -- 2/8/25

Adapting to Change

Quick question for frequent readers of these recaps: remember when I talked about that upcoming American Psycho reimagining that Luca Guadagnino was reportedly attached to direct? You know, the one with Austin Butler tapped to lead? The story I spent *three* different Weekly Recaps reporting and speculating on? Well, guess what? You can THROW IT OUT THE FUCKING WINDOW. Despite a multitude of respected outlets initially breaking the news of this supposed remake, coverage of it has all but completely stopped, and it seems almost certain that American Psycho will now be joining Lord of the Flies, The Shards, and 2 Sus 2 Spiria in the “Unrealized Guadagnino Projects” bin.

The final nail in the coffin for this nonexistent movie seems to have arrived this past week during an interview with CURA. Magazine, in which Luca speaks about his past projects and future plans. Amidst discussion of his work with screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes for Challengers and Queer, Luca hints at the two stories in his peripheral for future adaptation — and, spoilers, neither of them involve American Psycho:

“In my career I have many unrealized projects. Even with Suspiria, it took me many years to make it. Then I have Queer. And I have two more: one is Aryan Papers, which is an unrealized project of Stanley Kubrick, an adaptation of Louis Begley’s first book, Wartime Lies, that I have worked on for a long time for Warner Bros., with the blessing of the Kubrick estate and the Kubrick family; the other is an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks, that I read when I was 12, and that I have dreamt of making ever since. For 42 years I have been making it in my mind. I am adapting the script right now with the writer Francesca Manieri with whom I wrote We Are Who We Are. These are very complicated projects. The fact that I could remake Suspiria and I could make Queer tells me that I am a very lucky man, or a very persistent man. I get what I want. If I can manage to make either Buddenbrooks or Aryan Papers, then I can conclude my life very satisfied.

Who knows: maybe reporters saw an abbreviation of “AP” on a insider scoop document and figured it stood for “American Psycho” instead of “Aryan Papers,” or something like that. Regardless… not much mention of Patrick Bateman here.

Now, don’t get it twisted — my annoyed tone in this section is not coming out of frustration as a viewer. I’m *way* more stoked about these hypothetical adaptations, actually. For those unaware, Aryan Papers was going to be a massive film about the Holocaust that Kubrick shelved after lengthy preproduction, due to his fear over the mental anguish that spending so much time thinking about genocide would cause him. (Not the most outlandish reasoning in the world, when considering the toll that shooting Schindler’s List had on Steven Spielberg.) The prospect of one of the most exciting filmmakers working today tackling such a dark but artistically enticing project is super exciting to me — and if Guadagnino’s varied filmography tells us anything, it’s that he’s skilled at controlling whatever tone is required for his stories.

No, what frustrates me about this story is Luca’s sneaky-ass obsession with publicity flirting with various source materials that he never ends up going further with. It’s been a while since I quoted Kevin Garnett’s iconic line in Uncut Gems, but “WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU SHOW ME SOMETHING IF I COULDN’T HAVE IT?!” At this point, I feel like a broken record talking about speculated Guadagnino projects, and I’ve realized that it can’t go on any longer. If this saga of rumors and misdirection has taught me anything, it’s that absolutely no news regarding upcoming Luca Guadagnino adaptations is to be trusted, and that includes this news, as well. Yes, you heard me right: I’m not even considering Luca likely to adapt Aryan Papers *or* Buddenbrooks. I don’t know what’s real anymore, man! I would give the “fool me twice, shame on me” speech right now, but this is like the ninth time I’ve been fooled! The buck stops here, folks! I will not be talking about this Italian menace *nor* any of his announced projects until I see set photos. It’s time I stop trusting the fake news media and demonstrate some skepticism, patience, and restraint.

Gondry But Not Forgotten

Well, here’s an insane bombshell that dropped right before I was going to post this recap: a new film from Michel Gondry, the visionary director of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, has just been completely scrapped by Universal. And this isn’t just any little film… it’s Golden, a project inspired by the childhood of Pharrell Williams. (You might be asking, “Aidan, didn’t a Pharrell biopic just come out a few months ago?” Correct — that was Piece By Piece, a movie where Pharrell’s life is told with Lego Minifigures. This is a different movie.) Golden, which was initially slated for May 5th of this year, boasted a star-studded cast — including Kelvin Harrison Jr., Halle Bailey, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Brian Tyree Henry, Janelle Monáe, and *many* others — and was financed as part of a “longstanding creative partnership” between Pharrell and Universal.

You probably think you know where this is going: meddlesome studio executives were told by some evil algorithm that the film was too much of a risk and decided to shelve it, à la Coyote vs. Acme. Well, uh… not really. It turns out that the film was deemed “by unanimous conceit” amongst its producers to not be releasable. In a joint statement to Variety, Williams and Gondry stated the following.

“When all of us got into the editing room we collectively decided there wasn’t a path forward to tell the version of this story that we originally envisioned. We appreciate all the hard work of the talented cast and crew. While we’re disappointed we can’t deliver this film, we have incredible partners at Universal and will collaborate in a different capacity again soon.”

So, uh, this is crazy. Studios often realize through test screenings that a film in their upcoming release slate is unfixably bad, but the most they usually do is bury it in January or try a Hail Mary marketing spin to trick folks into seeing it anyway. But in this case, Universal was apparently so disappointed by the results of this shoot that they were straight-up willing to eat the $20 million production costs and call it a day. There’s no malicious activity to be found in this headline: all the artists and crew members involved were paid their salary, and nobody is on bad terms with anybody. The project just simply didn’t pan out.

This is a type of story you don’t usually see in the trades, and I’m just kind of fascinated by it. Putting aside its existence as an obvious ego boost for Pharrell, the central conceit of Golden is by no means bad… so where did it all go wrong? Given that the film (stopped mid-post-production) is permanently scrapped everyone involved seems like they want to move past it, we will probably never know. Gondry is a very ambitious filmmaker, so it could be that the film took some big swings that ended up backfiring, but again — who knows? I guess I can’t complain if every producer involved agreed this decision was for the best, but I also just kind of feel bad. It’s not every day a movie is cancelled and deleted from existence because it was just too shitty. I mean, look at some of the bullshit that has come out in the past few years. You’re telling me Golden was less releasable than Madame Web? Than Cats? Than fucking Justice League? I refuse to believe it!

Rage Against the Machine Learning

And so it begins. With the 2025 Oscars only three weeks away, considerations are already being made for next year’s ceremony in regards to a certain technological specter that’s been haunting industry conversations for the past two years. Per Variety, the Motion Picture Academy is considering possibly “changing its Oscar submission requirements so that films would have to disclose their use of AI.” Yes, this debate has gained notoriety after The Brutalist was revealed to have used AI in its production — but believe it or not, many other films that are either nominated for Oscars or were shortlisted contain AI-contributed effects. Australia-based Rising Sun Pictures’ Revize machine learning toolset is cited in the article as having been used for VFX shots for several recent projects, including facial aging details in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and wide shots in which stunt actors were tweaked to look more like their movie star counterparts in A Complete Unknown. Different AI toolsets were used for nominated features like Alien: Romulus (for the ghastly recreation of a certain deceased actor) and Dune: Part Two (for identifying and replicating the blue eyes of the Fremen in the film).

As I discussed in my breakdown of The Brutalist’s AI controversy, there is a difficult degree of nuance that needs to be had in order to create proper guidelines for the use of AI in visual effects for film and television. Within this Variety article, there are plenty of examples of AI use that fall within standards of ethical VFX work that have existed for decades now. (For example, it’s hard to be too upset at the use of CopyCat in the blue-eye-ification of the actors in Dune: Part Two, since the use of the tool itself did not eliminate any job positions or even replicate creative processes — instead, it merely saved “hundreds of hours” of work for VFX artists who were then able to spend their time working on other tasks.) That being said, the Academy’s inclination toward making disclosure of AI practices mandatory in the 2026 Oscars rules has me very excited. An overwhelming number of stories have come out in the past six months about major movies turning out to have used AI in sparing amounts during their productions, and it doesn’t take a genius to recognize that it will only become more prevalent as the tech advances.

Because of this, I think that there needs to be a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to lies of omission around AI. Yes, I understand that many visual effects supervisors will be reluctant to speak openly about machine learning and other non-problematic AI-associated tools for their films, since the very mention of those two letters is enough to spark outrage amongst large sects of the Internet. However, I’ll state this again: the only way we will be able to meaningfully prevent the most insidious uses of generative AI, which completely eliminates the creative human input required for artistic integrity, is if we a) have the facts of which specific type of AI is being used for each film and b) know how to distinguish the differences between each specific case.

So no more of this “well, we did use this one AI toolset for a few shots in this one scene, but we didn’t mention it because it’s not *that* big of a deal” bullshit. I don’t even care if it *isn’t* a big deal for your film — what happens when it *is* for someone else’s?! Allowing innocent uses of AI to go unmentioned leaves open the possibility of larger corporations sneaking more blasphemous uses of it through the door, and by the time it becomes so egregious that we start noticing it (because, mark my words — we will notice it), there might not be much anyone can do. In times like these, transparency must be the bare minimum. Setting hard rules for discretion at the Oscars is a lovely start, in my opinion. And if we are to remain vigilant about making sure AI is used to eliminate tedious processes *instead* of creative job fields, we need to keep this energy going for the foreseeable future.