Antonio Banderas will star as Hernán Cortés in Cortés, a big-budget historical film expected to rely heavily on AI. The filmmakers haven’t disclosed exactly how they’ll use the technology.
Cortés was a Spanish conquistador in the early 16th century. He captured Tenochtitlan and led to the downfall of the Aztec Empire in 1521. Paul Mignot (Victory or Death) is directing, with a screenplay by Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune). AI film company owner Marco Weber is producing.
According to Deadline, filming has begun in Paris, with additional shoots planned in Spain, where both Cortés and Banderas were born.
The film’s synopsis opens in Cuba in 1519. Cortés is a restless soldier hungry for glory who takes command of an expedition to the Yucatán and sails without permission. After landing on the coast of what is now Mexico, he meets Marina, an enslaved Indigenous woman and gifted linguist who becomes essential to his advance. As he turns fragile alliances, faith, and fear into tools of conquest, Marina watches him change from a daring outlaw into a self-anointed messiah.
The casting also comes with an age gap: Cortés was 36 in 1521, while Banderas is 66. Banderas likely looks better for his age than Cortés would have five centuries ago, and the film’s expected AI use could let the production de-age him if needed. That’s a possibility, not a confirmed plan.
Marco Weber’s Ex Machina Studios and Utopai Studios, both AI film companies, will be involved in production and handle global sales and film distribution. The amount of AI the film will use, and what it will do, remains unknown. Deadline reports that the project was long considered unfilmable because of its scale, leading to expectations of significant AI use. The available details don’t yet explain how the filmmakers plan to use the technology to tackle that scale.
