Wim Wenders
German filmmaker
The New German Cinema master behind Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire warns that generative AI is an existential threat to art, arguing that instant script generation would mean “the end” for screenwriters.
In his words
You give three ideas and the next day you have a new script that many studio executives will want to use. For screenwriters it would be the end.
Biography
Wim Wenders (born 1945) is a central figure of New German Cinema and one of Europe’s most honoured living directors — Paris, Texas (Palme d’Or, 1984), Wings of Desire, the documentaries Buena Vista Social Club and Pina, and the Oscar-nominated Perfect Days (2023).
AI and the death of the script
Wenders has argued that generative AI threatens art itself unless humans stay at the centre of the creative act, and that the technology’s speed is precisely its danger. “With AI everything gets done very fast,” he warned — feed it a handful of ideas and a usable script appears overnight, ready for executives to seize on. For screenwriters, he concluded, “it would be the end.”
He pairs this with a broader lament that franchise filmmaking and algorithmic sameness are already draining originality from cinema, casting AI as an accelerant of a decline he sees underway. His remedy is not nostalgia but insistence on human authorship as the irreducible core of a film.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/wim-wenders