Sheep in the Box is not based on a true story, although the film was inspired by real developments in artificial intelligence. Hirokazu Kore-eda’s science-fiction drama tells an entirely fictional story about a grieving couple who use a humanoid robot designed to look and behave like their deceased son. While the characters and events are fictional, the technology at the center of the story has roots in something that is already being explored in the real world.
READ MORE: Our full review of Sheep in the Box
What Influenced Hirokazu Kore-eda to Make Sheep in the Box?
The initial inspiration for Sheep in the Box came from an article Kore-eda read about a Chinese business using generative AI to simulate deceased people. The idea of technology being used to recreate someone who had died stayed with the filmmaker and eventually led him to imagine a near-future in which grieving parents could bring home a humanoid version of their deceased child. Kore-eda has explained that he was less interested in predicting exactly where AI technology might go and more interested in exploring the emotions that could lead someone to use it.
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The story of Otone and Kensuke and their humanoid son Kakeru is therefore entirely fictional, even though the premise has a connection to real-world AI developments, and may even remind viewers of Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Rather than making a movie about whether this technology could realistically exist, Kore-eda uses the science-fiction concept to explore grief, memory, family, and the difficulty of letting go of someone who has died. The result is a story that uses a futuristic premise to examine very familiar human emotions.
