Inaugural Contenders Hall Of Fame Award Recipient Guillermo del Toro Says Working With Weinstein Brothers Was Worse Than Having Father Taken Hostage – Contenders Los Angeles

1997 was a memorable year for Guillermo del Toro for two reasons: His father was kidnapped in Guadalajara, Mexico, and, after a turbulent experience with Bob and Harvey Weinstein on his sophomore feature Mimic, the film was released.

But which was worse to deal with — the kidnapping or the Weinsteins?

“The Weinsteins, hands down,” del Toro told Deadline’s Mike Fleming Jr. in an appearance at Contenders Film: Los Angeles on Saturday. “Because on the other thing, you knew what they wanted. The Weinsteins, who the f*ck knew what they wanted?”

Sharing that “there’s images” and “moments” in Mimic “that come from that ordeal,” del Toro noted that his Weinstein brothers debacle unfortunately “lasted more than 72 days” and was far more unpredictable of a scenario to grapple with than what he had while teaming with Avatar helmer James Cameron to get his father back, in an experience he said bonded the two filmmakers as “brothers.”

Del Toro was on hand at the DGA Theater to accept Deadline’s inaugural Contenders Hall of Fame Award, as well as to discuss his latest film, Frankenstein, which he said marked the culmination of “more than 30 years of career and 50 years of obsession.”

During the sit-down, the filmmaker also shared his feelings on artificial intelligence — the technology poised to disrupt entertainment in innumerable ways — which he said “can be summarized as ‘F*ck AI.'”

For all he knows, del Toro said, AI “may be useful for architecture, chemistry, medicine. … But as far as art, I don’t think any artist raised their hand and said, ‘Can we have AI?’ I don’t think so.” Comparing the technology to an uninvited party guest, he said AI “knows what has been done; it doesn’t know what to do next. It’s not a human.”

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What’s most interesting to the creative to consider, when it comes to AI, is whether we’ll see the moment he considers the “threshold,” when people are willing to pay $12-$13 to watch a film or listen to a song made by artificial intelligence. “If that happens,” he reflected, “then we’ll get the movies we deserve, I’m afraid to say.”

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