Lionsgate Film ‘Fall’ Used Deepfake Tech to Delete More than 30 F-Words for PG-13 Rating

To achieve a PG-13 rating for its new low-budget thriller Fall, Lionsgate turned to deepfake technology to delete more than 30 uses of the f-word to tone the film down, according to a report.

The film, set to debut in theaters on August 12, only had a $3 million budget, so going back in for re-shoots was an expense that was just not feasible. Instead, producers turned to a new sound company named Flawless to re-dub some of the dialogue electronically instead of reshooting scenes or having the actors dub their lines.

The company, which boasts Fall director Scott Mann as a co-CEO, uses computer software called TrueSync to generate an actor’s voice without manually recording any dialogue.

“For a movie like this, we can’t reshoot it,” the film’s director explained to Variety. “We’re not a big tentpole… we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the time, more than anything else. What really saved this movie and brought it into a wider audience was technology.”

Even during filming, producers felt that the liberal use of f-bombs might be problematic but they went ahead and filmed it that way, according to the report.

“When we were filming the movie, we didn’t know if we were R or if we were PG-13, so I said the F-word so many times I think Scott wanted to kill me in post when we were trying to get a PG-13 rating,” said Fall co-star Virginia Gardner.

The film follows two women (Gardner and Grace Caroline Currey) who climb a huge radio tower to scatter the ashes of their dead husbands in the wind. But the pair become stranded atop the tower and end up at risk of falling 2,000 feet to their deaths.

The TrueSync software was originally designed to aid in the re-dubbing of foreign language films, but Mann knew that the tech was just what he needed to clean up Fall for an American release.

Mann added that more than 30 uses of the f-word were removed and replaced by softer words such as “freaking.” And Flawless was able to do the re-dubbing in only two weeks, whereas it would have taken months and millions of dollars to re-shoot scenes with different lines.

Now, when the film opens this month, it will feature an MPA PG-13 rating for “bloody images, intense peril and strong language” instead of an R rating.
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