A Note from James

Ever since I was little, I’ve had a love for movies and TV shows. Getting up early for Saturday morning cartoons. Even during the week, I’d wake up at 6 a.m. to watch Robotech, Voltron, and ThunderCats.

I watched scary movies with my family when I was far too young to be watching them 🤣. I have a core memory of seeing A Nightmare on Elm Street at six years old and being so terrified when Freddy’s arms kept extending until they spanned the whole width of the alley that I had to hide under a blanket. I still watched through a hole in it.

We had a copy of Star Wars (Ep. IV) on Betamax that my dad recorded off cable. I don’t know how many times I watched that tape, but when I rewatched it with my older son, I realized I can still recite the whole movie verbatim.

When I was 12, I used to babysit two boys down the street. All they wanted to do was watch The Little Mermaid. We’d watch it, say all the lines, sing all the songs, then put the VHS in the “High-Speed Rewinder” contraption and back into the VCR to play again.

I’d buy movie soundtracks: Braveheart, Titanic, all the 90s Disney films, The Last of the Mohicans. I’d use the instrumental tracks to study. If I couldn’t watch films, at least I could listen to them.

Now, as an adult, I’ll be in a therapy session and I’ll reference a movie or TV show to describe an emotion or a similar experience I’m going through.

I originally came up with Cast Away years ago, long before LLMs and AI-generated photo and video. So when I started building it, I did consider using AI to create a clip or a movie poster featuring the “dreamcast” a user came up with, generated from a prompt the site would build by pulling the film’s summary and the new actors.

But I want to build Cast Away as something that’s here to stay. It’s an extension of the ideas in your mind, the conversations you have with friends about recasting. A thought experiment. I don’t want to use AI to generate photos or videos of slates in ways that infringe on the rights of the actors or the studios.

I understand that’s the logical next step. When I show people Cast Away, a lot of them say “you know what would be cool…”

I want to respect the actors and everyone who has made and continues to make the movies and TV shows we love. I want to focus on people’s creativity and build a community that shares my love for film and TV.

If you’ve ever found yourself recasting a movie with friends, this is the place to keep doing it.