Pedro Pascal says 'Behemoth!' gave him 'tremendous hope' - and nobody made money

Pedro Pascal says shooting Tony Gilroy's Behemoth! left him with "a tremendous amount of hope" about the future of human-made movies - and the reason was simple: nobody on the Searchlight picture was doing it for the paycheck.

"We weren't making money on this movie. Nobody was," Pascal told Vanity Fair. "You had the most expensive people involved in this film because of their talent and their experience. So there was just this purity of love in the work from every single department, and that was incredibly contagious."

The film, written and directed by Gilroy, opens in theaters Dec. 4. Pascal stars as Alex Serian, a former child prodigy cellist who returns to Los Angeles to compose film scores and reconnect with his family. Olivia Wilde, Eva Victor, Will Arnett, Hank Azaria, Margarita Levieva and Matthew Lillard round out the cast. The drama bowed at the New York Film Festival, where Deadline's review called it a "lyrical love letter to the music of the movies."

A pushback against the robot takeover

Gilroy sees Behemoth! as part of a larger "fight for humanity" as AI creeps into film and music. "People's natural resistance to the robot takeover is clear," he said. "The music scene out here is the coral reef of what's happened. It's been dying out here for the last 15 years... It's grooving a little bit now. I think people want humans."

Asked whether AI could replace cinema's "incredibly humanizing element," the two-time Oscar nominee did not soften: "Can it be replaced by AI? Probably, quite shockingly, simply. There's probably an emotional amplitude knob on some f---ing algorithm, but this movie is organic."

His fix? "Blow up the AI centers, man" - before immediately clarifying: "I don't mean to blow them up. I mean blow them up at the voting box. Go and vote and blow them up."

Pascal framed it as a story about connection. "We want to be human beings and we want to be connected to one another and we want to tell each other's stories and witness each other's stories," he said. "That's my hope."