Nina Jacobson Sets AI’s Limit: Test Lines, Never Replace Actors

By Daniel Okafor

Lionsgate’s “Sunrise on the Reaping” opens in theaters on November 20, and producer Nina Jacobson confirms that artificial intelligence (AI) tested dialogue without replacing any onscreen performance.

At IndieWire’s 2026 Future of Filmmaking Summit in Los Angeles, Jacobson told editor-in-chief Brent Lang that her team used AI approximations of actors to test new line readings for the franchise prequel. The cast then recorded the selected lines through automated dialogue replacement (ADR), the post-filming process for recording replacement dialogue. None of the synthetic readings reached the finished screen.

Where did AI enter the workflow?

IndieWire described AI’s growing role in studio post-production, while Jacobson confined her own use to trying dialogue before the cast recorded its final ADR version.

“We just finished [post-production], fairly recently, on ‘Sunrise on the Reaping.’ We used [AI] very specifically as a tool — within production, within post-production — while, at the same time, never using it to ever replace any of our artists or anything you see onscreen,” Jacobson said.

“When you have ADR you want try out, you used to either have the editor getting in there with the lines you wanted … Just for something you’re trying out that you might not even keep. [AI] is a great tool to use ADR.”

IndieWire reported that Jacobson views AI as a tool for artists, not a substitute for them. She said it can duplicate a voice, retrieve a desired example, or test a slug, a script note directing a line. Her team would still reject the result because it is not the actors’ own voices.

The AI test amounted to a digital table read: possible readings first, recorded actors afterward. The division of labor was plain.

The writer still supplied the dialogue. Jacobson said she does not ask Claude what characters should say, nor does she ask it to finish a movie. She sees AI as a tool that can advance production and improve the creative outcome. She nevertheless considered it irrational not to use a tool on which the whole world seems to hinge.

What does the prequel add to the franchise?

IndieWire identified “Sunrise on the Reaping” as the sixth film adaptation of Suzanne Collins’s young-adult books series, a franchise launched in 2012 that quickly produced three additional entries. Lionsgate revived the property in 2023. “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” explored early politicking in Panem and President Snow’s rise to power.

Jacobson said the studio does not make a movie unless Collins writes a book. She rejected the idea that the franchise merely exists to milk its title.

She said the books speak to how people live now. The previous film addressed the allure of authoritarianism, why people embrace it as a political system and why they are drawn to it.

Jacobson said:

“This one is about resistance: the cost of [it, and] the fact that just because something is a certain way today does not mean it always will be. You cannot predict the future based on the status quo.”

Jacobson tied the story to young people confronting climate change and recession in democracy. She said the situation can seem impossible to address. Propaganda, she argued, can leave people believing that individual action changes nothing.

Resistance’s effects may take more than four years, or a lifetime, to become visible. They still accumulate, she said. The film feels like a movie about the present for viewers of one installment or all of them.

What else came from Color Force and the summit?

Jacobson also discussed Color Force projects during the summit, including a coming “Dirty Dancing” sequel starring Jennifer Grey and HBO’s “Crazy Rich Asians” series. The same program featured a keynote from directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller about producing their science-fiction blockbuster “Project Hail Mary.” Bill Hader joined a one-on-one to discuss what he learned making “They Know,” his upcoming feature debut. IndieWire published the complete conversation with Jacobson in a video.

What supported the summit?

IndieWire said AT&T Untold Stories, a multi-year collaboration between AT&T and the Tribeca Festival, presented its 2026 Future of Filmmaking Summit in Los Angeles. The program awards $1.2 million, mentorship and comprehensive support to the next generation of filmmakers seeking to bring films to the big screen. IndieWire directs readers to further program information online.

As “Sunrise on the Reaping” opens on November 20, audiences will hear the cast’s ADR, not the AI approximations. The verdict is plain: useful in the workflow, unacceptable in the final performance.