The Machine is Caradog James’ first motion picture. Like the excellent Don’t Knock Twice it does a huge amount with very little, exploring the rise of artificial life and intelligence through its impact on two scientists, Vincent and Ava. Vincent is close to cracking AI when Ava is brought on to help out. She does so, but in a manner neither could guess and which leads directly to a very odd and profoundly disturbing version of the Singularity. With Caity Lotz and Toby Stephens in the leads it’s a tiny movie that deals with massive ideas supremely well and helped catapult both its stars into the high profiles roles they now have. It’s great and very much worth tracking down. Especially as the TV version is not only on the way but just made two major casting announcements.
Deadline report that Lance Henriksen and Katee Sackhoff, already a James collaborator on Don’t Knock Twice, have joined the show. Here’s how Deadline describe it:
The project explores the epic conflict between man and technology through the lives and motivations of six interwoven characters – each of whom holds the key to humanity’s victory or its destruction.
And here’s where it gets really interesting:
Sackoff, Henriksen and Bettencourt will voice supercomputers Nadia, Stanley and Kazimir, respectively.
Bettencourt is Jaeden Bettencourt by the way, best known for Hotel Transylvania. Given the word used is ‘voice’ and not ‘play’ we’re guessing Nadia, Stanley and Kazimir are three Artificial Intelligences which instantly marks this out as very different to the movie. No further news yet but we’re really excited to see this come to the small screen, especially with James writing it and this cast. More on The Machine as we soon as we know.
