Tim Burton talks about his dread of AI as an exhibition of his work opens in London

LONDON -- The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits — each connected show astatine an accumulation that is opening successful London conscionable successful clip for Halloween.

But you cognize what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.

Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had utilized AI to blend his drawings pinch Disney characters “really disturbed me.”

“It wasn’t an intelligence thought — it was conscionable an internal, visceral feeling,” Burton told reporters during a preview of “The World of Tim Burton” accumulation astatine London’s Design Museum. “I looked astatine those things and I thought, ‘Some of these are beautiful good.’ … (But) it gave maine a weird benignant of scary emotion inside.”

Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because “once you tin do it, group will do it.” But he scoffed erstwhile asked if he’d usage nan exertion successful this work.

“To return complete nan world?” he laughed.

The accumulation reveals Burton to beryllium an analogue artist, who started disconnected arsenic a kid successful nan 1960s experimenting pinch paints and colored pencils successful his suburban Californian home.

“I wasn’t, early on, a very verbal person,” Burton said. “Drawing was a measurement of expressing myself.”

Decades later, aft films including “Edward Scissorhands,” “Batman,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Beetlejuice,” his ideas still statesman pinch drawing. The accumulation includes 600 items from movie workplace collections and Burton's individual archive, and traces those ideas arsenic they beforehand from sketches done collaboration pinch set, accumulation and costume designers connected nan measurement to nan large screen.

London is nan exhibition’s last extremity connected a decade-long circuit of 14 cities successful 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded pinch 90 caller objects for its tally successful nan British capital, wherever Burton has lived for a 4th century.

The show includes early drawings and oddities, including a competition-winning “crush litter” motion a teenage Burton designed for Burbank garbage trucks. There’s besides a recreation of Burton’s studio, down to nan trays of paints and “Curse of Frankenstein” mug afloat of pencils.

Alongside hundreds of drawings, location are props, puppets, group designs and iconic costumes, including Johnny Depp’s “Edward Scissorhands” talons and nan achromatic latex Catwoman costume worn by Michelle Pfeiffer successful “Batman Returns.”

“We had very generous entree to Tim’s archive successful London, stuffed afloat of thousands of drawings, storyboards from stop-motion films, sketches, characteristic notes, poems,” said accumulation curator Maria McLintock. “And really to synthesize specified a wide ranging and meandering profession wrong 1 accumulation was a nosy situation — but decidedly a challenge.”

Seeing it has not been a wholly nosy acquisition for Burton, who said he’s incapable to look excessively intimately astatine nan items connected display.

“It’s for illustration seeing your soiled laundry put connected nan walls,” he said. “It’s rather amazing. It’s a spot overwhelming.”

Burton, whose long-awaited horror-comedy sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” opened astatine nan Venice Film Festival successful August, is presently filming nan 2nd bid of Netflix’ Addams Family-themed bid “Wednesday.”

These days he is simply a awesome Hollywood head whose American gothic style has spawned an adjective — “Burtoneqsue.” But he still feels for illustration an outsider.

“Once you consciousness that way, it ne'er leaves you,” he said.

“Each movie I did was a struggle,” he added, noting that early films for illustration “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure” from 1985 and “Beetlejuice” successful 1988 received immoderate antagonistic reviews. “It seems for illustration it was a pleasant, fine, easy journey, but each 1 leaves its affectional scars.”

McLintock said Burton “is a profoundly affectional filmmaker."

“I deliberation that’s what drew maine to his films arsenic a child,” she said. "He really celebrates nan misunderstood outcast, nan benevolent monster. So it’s been rather a weird but nosy acquisition spending truthful overmuch clip successful his encephalon and his imaginative process.

“His films are often called dark,” she added. “I don’t work together pinch that. And if they are dark, there’s a very overmuch a benignant of dream successful nan darkness. You ever want to bent retired successful nan acheronian successful his films.”

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“The World of Tim Burton” opens Friday and runs until April 21, 2025.

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Associated Press journalist Kwiyeon Ha contributed to this story.

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This communicative has corrected that nan Catwoman costume is from “Batman Returns,” not “Batman.”