Fans Are Outraged Over Netflix's Use of AI to Recreate Christopher Nolan's Vocie

There are plenty of legendary filmmakers still working in Hollywood today, but Christopher Nolan is among the youngest. Throughout his career, Nolan has been a devout advocate for the importance of the theatrical experience, and that is one of several reasons why the filmmaker has long vowed that he would never work with Netflix.

That beef recently got a new chapter when fans were outraged that Netflix appeared to recreate the director's voice using AI. Here's what we know about the beef, and about this incident.

The beef appears to have started back in 2017 when Nolan made it clear that he had no plans to work with Netflix.

“Netflix has a bizarre aversion to supporting theatrical films,” he told IndieWire. “They have this mindless policy of everything having to be simultaneously streamed and released, which is obviously an untenable model for theatrical presentation. So they’re not even getting in the game, and I think they’re missing a huge opportunity.”

Nolan added that, while Netflix had invested money in filmmakers to get their projects made, the whole thing was an attempt to shut down movie theaters.

“I think the investment that Netflix is putting into interesting filmmakers and interesting projects would be more admirable if it weren’t being used as some kind of bizarre leverage against shutting down theaters,” he said. “It’s so pointless. I don’t really get it.”

These comments made it pretty clear that Nolan despised Netflix for what it was doing to the movie business, and it seems like the feeling might be mutual. Netflix is now facing a new round of backlash after it appeared to use Nolan's voice during a holiday party. The online rage has been pretty swift, which makes sense given that Nolan is one of the internet's favorite filmmakers.

The controversy centers on the holiday party for Netflix's film division. Apparently, Netflix used an AI-generated version of Nolan's voice to talk through Netflix's film achievements in 2024 at the party in a narrated video. While it's possible that they did not intend to replicate Nolan's voice, enough people noticed the similarity and wondered whether Netflix had done it intentionally.

"Christopher Nolan, sue Netflix out of existence. Please be mean for once in your life, please please please," one person wrote on X (formerly Twitter).

"This seems ... weird and super cringe. Christopher Nolan has never made a movie for Netflix and they're using AI Chris Nolan to pat themselves on the back?" another person added.

While Nolan seems unlikely to sue, it seems clear that one of the reasons that Nolan is unlikely to work with Netflix is because they do things like create AI versions of his voice. Nolan has always valued practical, real filmmaking, and he loves the theatrical experience. Film nerds everywhere love his movies in large part because of what he represents about filmmaking, and for them, Netflix is antithetical to that.