John Milton's Paradise Lost has resisted adaptation for centuries. The scale of its heavenly war, its fallen angels, and its cosmic spectacle have always made it a production nightmare. Ex Machina Studios is now betting that artificial intelligence can solve what budgets alone could not.
The studio announced that Roger Avary will write and direct a feature film adaptation of the epic poem, which Milton published in 1667. Avary is best known for co-writing Pulp Fiction with Quentin Tarantino, a collaboration that won both men the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He also directed The Rules of Attraction in 2002 and wrote the screenplay for Beowulf in 2007.
Marco Weber, co-founder and CEO of Ex Machina and a producer on films including The Thirteenth Floor and Brooklyn's Finest, will produce. Kirk Petruccelli will executive produce.
The catch is the production method. Ex Machina will use what it describes as a "proprietary AI-enabled production pipeline" to realize the film's cosmic visuals at what it calls "a responsible budget." The studio insists the pipeline preserves "the primacy of real actors, human-authored narratives, and guild-aligned production practices." The same workflow is being used across Ex Machina's growing slate, which includes Heaven from director Alex Proyas and a film called Cortés.
The studio says it is producing the film "in active alignment with Hollywood guilds" and has committed to keeping principal production in Los Angeles. It also says it retains the flexibility to use open-source video generation tools where creatively appropriate.
Ex Machina describes the project as "the ultimate faith-based heroic saga," following the archangel Lucifer's defiance of God, his fall into Hell, and his eventual seduction of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The studio frames the material as a blockbuster retelling of humanity's origin myth.
No release date or cast has been announced.
