The Star of This $70 Million Sci-Fi Film Is a Robot

Helderman, whose company’s credits include the 2017 Netflix movie “To the Bone,” said the film had a dime-a-dozen sci-fi plot that wouldn’t have made it on his radar if it hadn’t been for the star. (In addition to BondIt, the Belgium-based Happy Moon Productions and Ten Ten Global Media in New York have also committed to back the film.) But video calls with Ishiguro and Kohei Ogawa, an assistant professor at Osaka University who had joined the Erica project in 2016, convinced Helderman that the project was more than slush-pile material.

In the story, which was written by Khoze, Eric Pham, the visual effects supervisor, and Tarek Zohdy, Erica plays an artificially intelligent woman, b, who can surge into the body and mind of any human host. The film follows her creators’ efforts to gain control of her as she becomes self-aware.

Erica had originally been set to star in a project directed by Tony Kaye (“American History X”), but scheduling issues led the producers to abandon it. No director or human co-stars are attached to “b” yet (Khoze said they have interviewed several filmmakers and will make their choice in the next few weeks), but some of Erica’s scenes were filmed in Japan last year. They hope to finish the rest in Europe next summer.

But while she awaits her human counterparts, Erica is rehearsing. There’s just one problem: She has no emotional memories.

Acting school for androids

Helderman said that when he initially met her, Erica’s acting chops were nonexistent. “At first, she didn’t understand what acting was,” Helderman said. “It was like teaching a child why we respond the ways we do.”

The team taught her how to perform over more than two years of daily sessions using what Helderman calls a “Marlon Brando” method. Some stars might draw on their own experiences to create a character, but they instructed Erica to emulate other actors’ performances. Actors explained out loud how they were feeling in each scene to Erica.