Ethereum has already changed the world.
Vitalik Buterin’s blockchain has created a 2.0 in cryptography, allowing the technology to move beyond bitcoin and birth an entire decentralised world. And it’s underpinned the creation of NFTs, a new form of art-collection for the post-digital society.
So it’s perhaps unsurprising that Ethereum is about to get its own movie, The Infinite Machine, based on a best-selling book of the same name. However, even Ethereum’s biggest cheerleaders will be wowed by the people behind the project.
The film will be produced by Ridley Scott and his company, which is responsible for Alien, Gladiator and Blade amongst other titles. Award-winning director Shyam Madiraju, meanwhile, will helm the day-to-day shooting. This is some seriously A-grade, Hollywood-level heft.
The team behind the project are drawn from five different countries – Spain, Portugal, Cuba, Argentina and the U.S. – and this being an Ethereum project, they want to avoid third-party intermediaries wherever possible.
Although some of the $16 million budget will come from traditional sources, the organisers will also raise funds via an NFT genesis collection sale, conducted using Ethereum technology. Revenues from the sale will also be used to support emerging artists and boost the NFT-creation community.
What can we expect from the film?
Films about technology are usually bad news.
They’re invariably set in some desolate dystopian moonscape in which AI, robotics and digi-vation is used to either
- Control our minds.
- Shadow our every move.
- Entrap us in some synthetic paradise that buries us in a false impression of happiness.
Even The Social Network focused more on the bickering between Facebook’s founding fathers than the remarkable product they created. Instead of showcasing the innovation and audacity, the movie zeroed in on the greed and petty jealousies.
The Infinite Machine promises to be altogether more positive, however.
The book, written by journalist Camilla Russo, explores the innovations unleashed by Vitalik and his fellow architects in great detail. Ethereum is pitched as a revolutionary project, ‘the next internet’ as the blurb describes it.
However, the book also touches on some of the challenges faced by Ethereum, notably its struggle to achieve scale in the face of relentless demand. So we can expect the film to take a balanced look at the blockchain, pitching it as a brilliant-but-flawed work in progress – which, of course, it is.
When can we expect the film to come out?
The organisers hope to release The Infinite Machine by Q4 2023, by which time Ethereum should be bigger and better than ever, thanks to the release of the Merge.
There is one question hanging in the air, however: who will play Vitalik in the title role?
Answers on a postcard please. We’ll be sure to pass them on to Ridley and the crew…
