Steven Soderbergh's new documentary about John Lennon leans on artificial intelligence for roughly 10 percent of its runtime — and the director says he owes audiences a straight explanation for why.
The film, titled John Lennon: The Last Interview, is built around the final conversation Lennon gave before he was shot and killed in December 1980. Recorded at his home with wife Yoko Ono and an RKO Radio team, the interview covers Double Fantasy, the album he did not know would be his last, ranging across parenthood, partnership, creative philosophy, and hopes for the future. It had never previously been released in full.
Soderbergh told Deadline the challenge was transforming an audio-only conversation — nearly three hours in its original form — into a cinematic experience. He worked with the Lennon estate to assemble more than a thousand archival images to support the material. But certain stretches where Lennon and Ono speak in abstract, philosophical terms resisted conventional illustration. For those passages, which amount to about a tenth of the finished film, Soderbergh turned to AI-generated imagery, a technique he describes as "thematic surrealism."
Meta served as both a creative technology partner and financial backer on the project. When Soderbergh first disclosed AI's involvement, it triggered immediate backlash from some quarters. He said those reactions are understandable, and they reinforce his belief that filmmakers have an obligation to be transparent about how and why they use the technology. "I owe people honesty," he said.
The director spoke to Deadline ahead of the film's Cannes premiere in what he described as his first in-depth interview about the project. He discussed the specific sequences AI made possible and the iterative process used to develop them, as well as the ethical thinking that guided his choices. He also reflected on the Beatles as what he called "a clinic in creative evolution" and said he has ambitions to return to large-scale event filmmaking.
The interview itself, Soderbergh said, is striking for how present and engaged Lennon appears. Candid and reflective, Lennon and Ono move fluidly between the personal and the philosophical, unaware of what would happen later that evening on December 8, 1980.
