Jared Hess
Director
Director of Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho Libre, and A Minecraft Movie. He kept generative AI out of the biggest video-game adaptation ever made, then signed Hollywood’s Creators Coalition on AI — a letter that accepts the technology but demands guardrails.
Why this score
How the formula works →- 33%nuancedHolds a documented two-sided view
- 27%antiCalls AI overhyped
- 27%nuancedSupports AI only with conditions
- 13%anti2 anti-AI statements (measured)
Includes the ×1.25 multiplier for having a stake in an AI-impacted field. Evidence splits 0% pro, 40% anti, 60% direction-free → Nuanced
In his words
We were old school, so we used human artists with awesome brains and imaginations.
Biography
Jared Hess (born July 18, 1979, in Glendale, Arizona) is an American director who met his co-writer and wife Jerusha at Brigham Young University’s film school and turned a student short called Peluca into Napoleon Dynamite, the 2004 comedy that became one of the defining independent hits of its decade. Nacho Libre and Gentlemen Broncos followed, and the Hesses were later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for Ninety-Five Senses. In 2025 he directed A Minecraft Movie, the Warner Bros. adaptation of Mojang’s sandbox game and by far the largest production of his career.
No AI in the Overworld
Two days before A Minecraft Movie opened, TechRadar asked Hess directly whether generative AI had been used anywhere in the production of a film built almost entirely from digital blocks. He said no — flatly, and without hedging. The Overworld and the Nether were built by artists, and the technology his team actually leaned on was a virtual art department running in Unreal Engine, plus Minecraft VR headsets that Hess himself could not tolerate for more than a few minutes.
Look, AI is going to affect every aspect of life, including entertainment. I just hope it’s used as a tool and not as a shortcut. Again, the human experience is so critical to all forms of art, and that kind of nuance and voice and perspective is something that AI can’t replicate. It’s currently able to imitate things, sure, but I’m always just going to gravitate toward the human [experience] wherever I can.
It is a tool-not-shortcut position rather than a rejection, and Hess made it while sitting on top of the most expensive production of his career — a director with every commercial incentive to automate saying he would rather pay artists. In December 2025 he backed that up with a signature, joining the launch roster of the Creators Coalition on AI alongside Guillermo del Toro, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Turning Red director Domee Shi, and Natalie Portman. The coalition’s opening letter is explicit that it is “not a full rejection of AI,” asking instead for consent, compensation, and transparency in training data, job-transition plans, and safeguards against deepfakes.
That places Hess in the large and growing middle of the filmmaking debate: not among the directors who vow never to touch the technology, and not among those experimenting with it in the edit. His objection is narrow and craft-specific — that imitation is not the same as a point of view — and it is one he has so far argued mostly by example, keeping AI out of a studio blockbuster and letting the credits do the talking.
Quote sources
- TechRadar, 2025(techradar.com)
Sources & further reading
- TechRadar: ‘We were old school’ — A Minecraft Movie’s Jared Hess denies using AI to enhance his film adaptation (2025)
- Animation Magazine: Entertainment Industry Humans Launch ‘Creators Coalition on AI’ (2025)
- The Hollywood Reporter: Hollywood Insiders Unite to Fight for Future of Industry With Launch of Creators Coalition on AI (2025)
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/jared-hess
