Where to watch A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)

Trivia & production notes

• Stanley Kubrick spent years developing the film in the late 1970s and 1980s, initially asking Steven Spielberg to direct while he produced, but the project languished in development hell for over a decade.
• Brian Aldiss, who wrote the original short story, was fired by Kubrick over creative differences in 1989 and later complained that Kubrick hired Ian Watson, whom Aldiss considered his enemy, as a replacement writer.
• Kubrick conceived of the film as a robot version of Pinocchio and consistently referred to it by that title rather than A.I., even instructing writer Sara Maitland to give the film a fairy-tale quality.
• The character of Gigolo Joe was originally designed as a G.I. mecha before writer Ian Watson suggested making him a male prostitute, prompting Kubrick to joke that they had lost the kiddie market.
• Spielberg did not direct the film when Kubrick first offered him the position in 1995, instead convincing Kubrick to remain as director so Spielberg could work on other projects.
• Spielberg only took over as director after Kubrick's death in March 1999, and this was his first solo screenplay credit since Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977.
• Spielberg briefly considered abandoning A.I. in early 2000 to direct other films including Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Minority Report, and Memoirs of a Geisha before committing to A.I.
• Spielberg initially planned for David to be an animatronic robot built by Stan Winston but changed his mind after seeing Haley Joel Osment's performance in The Sixth Sense.
• Voice actor Jack Angel, who voiced Teddy, recorded all his lines out of context with only the direction to sound like Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh but wiser and more stoic, yet was required to be on set daily for potential line adjustments.
• Spielberg replicated Kubrick's secretive filmmaking practices by withholding the complete script from cast and crew, banning press from set, and requiring confidentiality agreements from actors.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article A.I. Artificial Intelligence, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.