Hollywood is betting on an AI-made thriller built around the hunt for Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto, with a cast led by Gal Gadot and Casey Affleck.
Liman's AI Thriller
The film, titled "Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi," is directed by Doug Liman of "The Bourne Identity" fame. It also stars Pete Davidson, according to an exclusive report from The Wrap.
Producers say it is the first studio-quality feature to rely on wall-to-wall AI-generated imagery.
Visual effects studio Acme AI & FX is producing the project independently. The team built a custom soundstage with blank walls and basic lighting, then shot the film over 20 days. Sets and lighting will be generated later using AI tools during post-production.
Producer Ryan Kavanaugh told The Wrap the script calls for about 200 distinct locations, stretching from Antarctica to Antigua to Las Vegas. Shooting each one on location would have cost roughly $300 million. Using AI brought the budget down to about $70 million.
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Satoshi Mystery Returns
The film leans on a mystery that has gripped crypto for more than a decade. Its villain, in effect, is the question of who built Bitcoin.
Production also employed 107 cast members and 154 crew, with another 55 AI artists slated for a 30-week post-production run. The filmmakers have stressed the scale of human labor behind the project.
The release lands weeks after a New York Times investigation pointed to British cryptographer Adam Back, chief executive of Blockstream, as the likely Satoshi. Reporter John Carreyrou, known for breaking the Theranos story, cited overlaps in language, timelines and Back's early work on Hashcash.
Back has denied the claim repeatedly, both to the Times and in posts on X, calling the evidence circumstantial. Blockstream said the report offered no cryptographic proof. Earlier theories have pointed to Hal Finney, Nick Szabo and, in a 2024 HBO documentary, Peter Todd.
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