Jon Erwin says AI helped make 'Young Washington' safer and cheaper despite water physics

Jon Erwin, director of the historical drama “Young Washington,” has a very specific reason he talks about AI VFX: he needed a scene where a pre-Revolutionary War George Washington (played by William Franklyn-Miller) and his companion nearly drown, and he wanted the production to be safer and more affordable than doing it the hard way.

In Erwin’s telling, the big win from AI was not “magic” visuals that dissolve constraints. It was that even the most advanced visual effects tools are no match for the physics of water. That sounds contradictory until you think like a production. Water is real, it behaves in real time, and it punishes sloppy planning. The more you can handle safely off-camera with compositing and effects, the less you have to gamble with actors, safety crews, weather, and reshoots that blow budgets. “Young Washington” is releasing nationwide on Friday (July 3), which means the choices Erwin made about risk and cost are not just creative details. They are what ultimately determine whether the film ships on schedule and under control.

That distinction matters because “AI in film” is starting to be discussed like a single switch you flip. Either you use it or you don’t. But in practice, it is often a set of tools that change the economics of production. When AI-powered workflows help plan shots, augment VFX, and reduce the need for risky practical setups, they can shift costs from on-set operations and safety expenditures toward post-production work. That has second-order implications for staffing, vendor selection, and timelines. Post houses that can integrate AI-driven tasks might become more central, while the production team might feel more pressure to lock down plates, motion references, and continuity early, so the effects pipeline can run cleanly.

For board-level and investor-level decision-makers, the more interesting angle is what Erwin’s story implies about incentives. In any film, the cost structure has a tug-of-war between production and post. Practical effects can feel expensive in the moment, but they can reduce later spend and uncertainty if the shot is “done” on camera. Conversely, leaning into VFX tends to move cost later and adds dependency on the quality of reference footage and the health of the VFX pipeline. Erwin’s framing that AI makes production “safer and more affordable,” paired with the reminder that water physics still wins, is a sober model: use AI to reduce dangerous or inefficient production decisions, but do not assume AI can eliminate real-world physical limits.

It also lands in a moment when regulators, studios, and platforms are all wrestling with how AI should be treated in media. Even when specific rules vary by country, the policy questions tend to rhyme: disclosure, provenance, rights management, and how to prevent AI from being used to mislead audiences or reuse content without appropriate permission. Film executives do not need a law degree to see the operational impact. The more AI touches the filmmaking process, the more you need clean documentation and pipeline discipline. “Young Washington” illustrates why: if AI is part of the method used to execute scenes, then any downstream disputes or compliance requirements can affect deliverables, marketing claims, and distribution approvals. Even when a project is focused on historical drama, the production process increasingly has legal and reputational stakes.

There is another industry implication hidden in Erwin’s water note. When directors talk about AI VFX, audiences often imagine a tradeoff between realism and spectacle. Erwin’s point is more operational than aesthetic. Water is a forcing function. You cannot negotiate with it. So the practical question becomes: where can AI reduce the number of high-risk takes, where can it compress iteration cycles, and where can it make the production plan more predictable? That predictability is what lenders, distributors, and investors care about. A safer shoot can mean fewer incidents, fewer schedule slips, and a lower chance of expensive rework. “More affordable” also suggests the budget calculus shifted in the direction of AI-enhanced workflows, even if the final image still needed to respect the stubborn behavior of water.

If you are an executive in a studio, a producer managing a slate, or an investor tracking where AI is actually delivering value, Erwin’s description is a useful reality check. AI is not a substitute for physics, and it cannot turn dangerous scenes into consequence-free scenes. But it can reshape the risk profile of production by making certain effects work cheaper and safer to execute. That is a compelling pitch for the next wave of projects, especially those involving stunts, water, large-scale environments, or any scene where real-world execution can be costly and unpredictable.

Ultimately, the “Young Washington” release date on July 3 makes this more than a technical aside. It is a signal that AI-enabled VFX workflows are increasingly part of how films get made at all. And as more projects adopt similar methods, decision-makers who treat AI as optional will likely find themselves outcompeted on speed, safety, and cost control. The strategic stakes are simple: AI can help productions survive the real constraints, but only if leaders plan the process like the tools are real, reliable infrastructure, not a last-minute gamble.