DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE Writer Reacts to Viral Tom Cruise vs. Brad Pitt AI Fight and Says “It’s Likely Over for Us”
AI-generated movie clips are popping up everywhere right now. Big-name actors, familiar franchises, wild action sequences, all stitched together from a few lines of text and a powerful algorithm. It’s impressive, it’s weird, and depending on who you ask, it might be a serious problem.
The latest clip making the rounds was created using Seedance 2. From what’s been reported, it took a “two-line prompt” to generate a 15-second fight scene featuring digital recreations of Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
The AI versions of the actors throw down on a collapsing highway, complete with surprisingly intricate choreography and blockbuster-style chaos.
It’s the kind of thing that makes you pause for a second. Not because it looks perfect, it doesn’t, but because it looks close enough to make people nervous.
One of those people is Rhett Reese, co-writer of Deadpool & Wolverine. Reese saw the clip and cut straight to what it could mean for the industry he works in.
“I hate to say it. It’s likely over for us,” Reese wrote on X. He later clarified in the replies that he wasn’t joking about his reaction. “I meant that the way things are is over.”
That’s a heavy statement coming from a guy who helped shape one of Marvel’s most anticipated projects. Reese then zoomed in on what AI might already be doing to the screenwriting world.
“I suspect (could be wrong) that many screenwriters are using AI heavily in their writing, and many execs are using it heavily in their analysis of writing. So, hilariously, all the people are sitting back watching as AI critiques what it just created.”
That image is almost dystopian. Writers leaning on AI to draft scripts. Executives feeding those scripts back into AI to judge them. Software creating and evaluating its own output while the humans just sit and watch.
Later, Reese clarified that he wasn’t celebrating the tech. He was worried about what it means for writers and artists.
“I was blown away by the Pitt v Cruise video because it is so professional. That’s exactly why I’m scared. My glass half empty view is that Hollywood is about to be revolutionized/decimated,” Reese emphasized.
It’s easy to see why Reese feels like the ground is shifting. Still, I’m not convinced Hollywood is about to hand over the keys.
We’ve already seen how audiences react to AI experiments that go too far. Look at the backlash surrounding Tilly Norwood, an AI-generated actor that sparked immediate pushback online. Viewers didn’t embrace it as some exciting leap forward. They questioned it. They rejected it. They made it clear that a digital stand-in isn’t the same as a real performer.
And that’s the thing. Movie stars aren’t just faces. They’re personalities, reputations, brands. Cruise hanging off a plane or Pitt trading punches in a gritty drama carries weight because they’re real people doing real work. Even when CGI enhances the action, there’s still a human performance at the center of it.
Could AI speed up certain parts of production? Absolutely. Previsualization, concept testing, maybe even rough storyboarding. That feels inevitable. But replacing actors wholesale with hollow recreations to save a few dollars doesn’t seem like a sustainable move. Audiences care about authenticity more than studios sometimes give them credit for.
Reese’s comments tap into a larger anxiety spreading across Hollywood, especially after the writers’ and actors’ strikes put AI protections front and center. The Cruise vs. Pitt clip might be a flashy demo, but it also highlights how fast this technology is moving.
The question isn’t whether AI will play a role in filmmaking. It already does. The real question is how far studios will push it and how hard creatives will push back.
If Reese is right, the old way of doing things may be fading. But “over” feels like a stretch. Hollywood has survived the arrival of sound, television, home video, streaming, and every new wave of tech panic in between.
AI might change the process. It might reshape jobs. But the magic of watching real actors bring characters to life on screen? That’s not something you can recreate with a two-line prompt.
At least not yet.