The planned public London premiere of The Last Screenwriter was canceled in June 2024 after the Prince Charles Cinema said audience feedback showed strong concern about artificial intelligence being used in place of writers. The cancellation concerned the cinema event—not the completion of the film—and a private cast-and-crew screening was reported to continue.
What happened to the London premiere?
The Prince Charles Cinema in London’s West End had advertised a Sunday world premiere of the Swiss film The Last Screenwriter. On June 20, 2024, The Guardian reported that the cinema canceled the public screening and arranged ticket refunds after receiving negative audience feedback.
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The cinema said: “The feedback we received over the last 24hrs once we advertised the film has highlighted the strong concern held by many of our audience on the use of AI in place of a writer which speaks to a wider issue within the industry.”
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesThe Guardian and The Daily Beast both reported that a private screening for the cast and crew was still planned in London. That was separate from the canceled public premiere; the advertised public event did not proceed at the Prince Charles Cinema.
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- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Color; DVD; NTSC
What is The Last Screenwriter?
The Last Screenwriter is a Swiss production directed by Peter Luisi and starring Nicholas Pople. The reported premise follows a celebrated screenwriter whose confidence is shaken when an advanced AI writing system appears to match or exceed his abilities.
The screenplay was credited in the reporting to “ChatGPT 4.0.” That credit should not be casually changed to GPT-4o: The Guardian noted that OpenAI launched GPT-4o in May 2024, but the reports specifically used the “ChatGPT 4.0” screenplay credit.
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Was the movie really written entirely by ChatGPT?
The reporting describes AI-generated screenplay material, but not a film made without human involvement. Luisi directed the production, while actors and a film crew made the movie. His account to The Daily Beast also describes several human decisions in the writing process.
Luisi’s reported process
- Luisi originated the idea: a feature film about a screenwriter realizing that AI might be more capable than he is.
- He prompted ChatGPT to create the plot, characters, outline and scenes.
- He selected material from the generated output and sometimes shortened it.
- The selected screenplay was then used in a conventionally human-directed film production.
So “AI-generated script” describes the source of substantial screenplay text, while the available account also includes human conception, prompting, editorial selection and directing. The sources do not establish that ChatGPT independently produced the finished movie.
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Why did the cinema cancel it?
The Prince Charles Cinema’s stated reason was audience response and concern about replacing writers with AI. The statement framed the reaction as part of a wider film-industry issue, rather than as a technical problem with the theater or a claim that the film could not be screened.
The Daily Beast reported Luisi’s account that the theater received 40 complaints after the initial promotion and another 160 overnight—200 in total. Those figures were reported as Luisi’s count, not as an independently audited dataset. They do not establish that London audiences or the public as a whole held one uniform view.
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- Format: DVD
- Language: English
- Subtitle: English, Korean, None (All removable)
- Region Code: Region 0 (1/2/3/4/5/6)
- Screen: NTSC / Wide Screen Color
How did Peter Luisi respond?
Luisi said he believed early critics did not know enough about the project. He told The Daily Beast, “I feel like the film is not at all saying ‘this is how movies should be.’” He presented the project as an exploration of what an AI-assisted or AI-generated movie might be, not as a demand that the industry adopt the method.
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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →He also said: “It is here, and it’s here to stay. We just have to deal with it. We can’t ignore it, as much as we would like to.” His comments explain his artistic intent; they do not override the cinema’s separate explanation for canceling the public event.
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Why the dispute mattered to film workers
The cancellation landed during a continuing argument over AI, authorship and employment in film and television. The Guardian noted that protections concerning AI were a major issue in the preceding Hollywood writers’ strike and summarized provisions involving AI-generated drafts and writer credit. Those brief descriptions should not be treated as a complete account of the applicable agreements or law.
The controversy therefore involved two different questions: whether the film’s experiment was artistically legitimate, and whether audiences wanted to support a project perceived as substituting AI for a human screenwriter. The cinema’s decision addressed audience response to the public event, while Luisi defended the project’s exploratory purpose.
What happened after the cancellation?
The June 2024 reports said the filmmakers intended to make the film available online for free and to offer the screenplay as a download. Current availability of either item is not established by the reporting cited here, so those plans should not be treated as a present streaming or download destination.
Quick Recap
What can be stated with confidence?
- The canceled event was the planned public world premiere at London’s Prince Charles Cinema.
- The cinema cited audience feedback and concern about AI taking the place of writers.
- The Last Screenwriter was directed by Peter Luisi and credited “ChatGPT 4.0” for its screenplay.
- Luisi said he supplied the premise and guided prompting, selection and occasional shortening of generated material.
- The reported total of 200 complaints came from Luisi’s account and is not a representative public-opinion survey.
- A private cast-and-crew screening was reported separately from the canceled public premiere.
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