• Seth Rogen slammed AI scriptwriting at Cannes, calling AI-generated content “the most stupid dog shit I’ve ever seen”
• He said writers who use AI to write their scripts “shouldn’t be a writer” and should “go do something else”
• Rogen is at Cannes promoting Tangles, a hand-drawn animated film about a young woman navigating her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis
• The film premiered Friday and earned a seven-minute standing ovation
• Producer and co-founder Lauren Miller Rogen, Seth’s wife, drew on her own family’s experience with Alzheimer’s in making the film

Seth Rogen is not interested in any tool that makes him write less — and he wants Hollywood to know it.

Speaking to Brut at the Cannes Film Festival, the actor, writer, and producer didn’t hold back when asked about artificial intelligence in filmmaking. “I don’t understand what it’s supposed to do,” he said. “Every time I see a video on Instagram that’s like, ‘Hollywood is cooked,’ what follows is the most stupid dog shit I’ve ever seen in my life. And if your instinct is to use AI and not go through that process — you shouldn’t be a writer. Because you’re not writing.”

He kept going. “Go do something else. And if you don’t want to go through the process, you shouldn’t be a writer. The idea of a tool that makes me write less is not appealing to me, because I like writing.”

It’s a blunt take, but it lands with some weight coming from Rogen, who has spent decades building a career around the craft of writing — from Superbad to The Boys to everything in between. For him, the process isn’t a burden to be optimized away. It’s the point.

Every Frame Has a Human Touch

Rogen is at Cannes to promote Tangles, an animated film directed by Leah Nelson that follows a young illustrator named Sarah as she faces her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis and its ripple effect on her family. When the interviewer mentioned she was glad no AI was involved in the production, Rogen confirmed it without hesitation. “Not at all. It’s hand-drawn animation. Every frame has a human touch to it, which is great.”

The film premiered Friday and earned a seven-minute ovation from the Cannes audience — the kind of response that tends to follow something that genuinely moves people.

That emotional resonance is personal. Lauren Miller Rogen, Seth’s wife and a producer on the film, told Variety that she felt an immediate and deep connection to the story from the moment she read it. “There were so many similarities between my family and Sarah’s family,” she said. “Our moms were both teachers who were diagnosed in their early 50s. I related to the denial, fear and sense of aloneness that can come with a dementia diagnosis.”

Before the premiere, she told Deadline the film “spoke to me in such a sincere and deep way.” The Rogens co-founded Hilarity for Charity, an Alzheimer’s nonprofit, years ago — so this isn’t a cause they stumbled into. It’s one they’ve been living.

The trailer for Tangles gives a sense of what audiences at Cannes responded to — quiet, hand-drawn, deeply human. Exactly the kind of thing Rogen was talking about when he said no AI tool could replace the process of actually making something.

“The idea of a tool that makes me write less is not appealing to me,” he said again, “because I like writing.”

Hard to argue with that.

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• Vin Diesel broke down in tears honoring the late Paul Walker at a 25th-anniversary Cannes screening of The Fast and the Furious
• Paul Walker’s daughter Meadow, now 27 — the same age her father was when the film was made — attended alongside Diesel, Jordana Brewster, and Michelle Rodriguez
• Diesel confirmed the franchise finale, Fast Forever, is coming March 2028, with plans to bring back Walker’s character Brian O’Conner
• Animated Alzheimer’s drama Tangles also premiered at Cannes, leaving a packed theater — and Seth Rogen — unexpectedly emotional
• Cannes 2026 is shaping up to be one of the most emotionally charged festivals in recent memory

It’s just after 2 a.m. on the Croisette, and Vin Diesel is crying in front of a thousand people — and nobody wants to leave.

The 58-year-old actor, best known for playing the unbreakable Dominic Toretto, stood on the stage of the Grand Lumière Theatre at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday night, tears streaming down his face, barely able to get the words out. The credits had just rolled on a special midnight screening of The Fast and the Furious — the 2001 street-racing blockbuster that made Diesel a star and introduced the world to the franchise’s now-legendary obsession with family. Beside him stood Meadow Walker, the 27-year-old daughter of his late co-star Paul Walker. And the crowd gave them four uninterrupted minutes of applause.

“I pray that in your life, you get to have a brother like Paul,” Diesel said, after a long, heavy pause. Michelle Rodriguez stood next to him, reaching up to wipe the tears from his face.

A Night That Was Always Going to Hit Different

The evening had started with Diesel in full showman mode. He hit the red carpet at 11:55 p.m. in a diamond-studded blazer embroidered with the words “Fast Forever” — a wink at the franchise’s upcoming finale — signing autographs for the fans who had packed the Croisette just to catch a glimpse of the cast. His publicist reportedly had to physically pull him away from the crowd so the night could begin.

Inside the theater, the energy was electric. “I’ve never seen a midnight screening like this in my whole life,” Diesel told the audience with a laugh. “It’s not like this movie hasn’t been out for a minute.” When festival director Thierry Frémaux tried to get things moving, Diesel waved him off with a grin: “F— the film. I’m only here once in my whole life.”

But this Cannes trip was always going to carry weight. Diesel’s history with the festival goes back to 1994, when he brought his self-financed short film Multi-Facial — made for $3,000, documenting his experiences as a biracial actor navigating New York City — to the Croisette. That screening caught the eye of Steven Spielberg, who cast him in Saving Private Ryan. Cannes, in a very real sense, is where Vin Diesel’s career began. Coming back as the face of a $7 billion franchise, 25 years later, with the ghost of his closest co-star hanging over the room — it was never going to be a light night.

“This is a film where brotherhood was introduced to our millennium, by myself and my brother Pablo,” Diesel said before the screening began. He gestured toward Meadow. “The person that was not going to let me come alone here to represent that brotherhood was Meadow Walker.”

The Moment That Broke Everyone

After the credits rolled, Diesel returned to the stage and the composure he’d held onto all evening finally gave way.

“It’s so hard for me to watch it,” he said, “because there’s so many moments in this movie that you see, that I see differently. The scene that you see, I see the moment Pablo told me he had a 1-year-old daughter.”

That daughter was sitting right beside him. Meadow Walker, now a model and actress who had a cameo in Fast X, had shared something with Diesel earlier that day that clearly stayed with him. “She said, ‘I’m 27, and I’m watching this film that my father made at 27,'” Diesel told the crowd. “And I thought, ‘How profound.’ Meadow has been such a source of strength, and I know he’d be so proud of you. And I love you forever.”

The two embraced on stage as the audience lost it.

“I can’t even believe you want to see me f—ing cry,” Diesel said at one point, almost laughing at himself through the tears. “You must want to go home.” No one did. When silence fell over the room, one audience member called out, “Crying is beautiful!” — and then someone began singing “See You Again,” the Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth ballad written in the wake of Walker’s death in November 2013 to give his character Brian O’Conner a farewell in Furious 7. Diesel looked out at the room and said, simply: “You all have good hearts.”

Walker died at 40 in a high-speed car crash in Valencia, California. He had been in the middle of production on Furious 7.

“I tried to save my brother,” Diesel told the Cannes crowd. “It was all in the script at first — this blonde-haired, blue-eyed guy would be a brother to me. As the years went by, he wanted us to continue the story.”

Fast Forever — and What Comes Next

The emotional night doubled as something of a victory lap for the franchise. Diesel confirmed that Fast Forever, the planned finale, is officially on track for a March 17, 2028 release — and that Brian O’Conner will be part of it, though Diesel hasn’t revealed how. “I couldn’t imagine this saga ending without truly saying goodbye to Brian O’Conner,” he said previously. Walker’s character has technically been alive in the franchise’s universe since his emotional sendoff in Furious 7.

“I’m gonna go and shed a tear real quick,” Diesel told the crowd, “but I just want you all to know — the only reason why we’re making the finale of Fast for 2028 is because of each and every one of you that has given us your hearts and your loyalty. You make us want to make you all proud.”

The franchise also has a future beyond the films: Peacock is developing multiple series set in the Fast universe, Diesel announced at NBC’s upfronts earlier this month. “Over the last decade, the fans have wanted more,” he said. “They wanted us to expand the legacy characters, their stories.”

Meanwhile, Tangles Left the Room Wrecked

If the Fast screening was the festival’s most unexpected emotional gut-punch, the Thursday night premiere of Tangles was its more deliberate one — and it hit just as hard.

On paper, the animated film looks like a comedy. The cast includes Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Seth Rogen, Bryan Cranston, Bowen Yang, Sarah Silverman, Wanda Sykes, and even a voice cameo from Phil Rosenthal as a weary rabbi. But Tangles follows a Maine mother named Midge — played by Louis-Dreyfus — as she descends into Alzheimer’s, seen through the eyes of her rebellious daughter (Abbi Jacobson). The Salle Agnès Varda screening room was packed, and by the end of it, so were the tissues.

Even Rogen, who is rarely at a loss for words, seemed subdued when he introduced the film. “It’s an honor to be here. We hope you enjoy the film. Does anyone else want to say anything? You guys seem good. I love you,” he said — which, for Seth Rogen, qualifies as uncharacteristically quiet.

The film is currently for sale at Cannes and is already being whispered about as a potential player in next year’s animated Oscar race. Variety called it “honestly felt and highly affecting.” One person involved with the production summed up the post-screening mood plainly: “We all cried our eyes out.”

Three days into Cannes 2026, the festival’s defining mood isn’t glamour or controversy — it’s grief, memory, and the people we carry with us. Diesel said it best, even if he could barely get the words out: “Why do you have to show the world how human you are?”

The post Vin Diesel Breaks Down at Cannes Fast & Furious Screening appeared first on Cream.

• Tangles, an animated film about a daughter caring for her Alzheimer’s-stricken mother, made its world premiere at Cannes 2026
• Julia Louis-Dreyfus voices the mother and co-produced alongside Seth Rogen and Lauren Miller Rogen
• Louis-Dreyfus revealed the subject is deeply personal — her grandmother died of Alzheimer’s and her mother-in-law is currently living with the disease
• The film is adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s 2010 graphic memoir and directed by Leah Nelson in her feature debut
• Critics find it warm and earnest but slightly surface-level compared to heavier dementia dramas like The Father or Amour

Julia Louis-Dreyfus didn’t take on Tangles just because it was a good script. She took it because she’s living the story.

The animated film — which made its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival this week — follows a young woman named Sarah who leaves her blossoming life as a queer artist and activist in 1990s San Francisco to return to her conservative small-town family home after her mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Louis-Dreyfus voices the mother, Midge. And when producer Lauren Miller Rogen first sent her the project, the role landed somewhere deep.

“My grandmother died of it and my mother-in-law is currently suffering with it and I understand the disease well and the toll that the disease can take on a family,” Louis-Dreyfus said at a live taping of THR’s Awards Chatter podcast recorded at Meta House inside the Majestic Hotel in Cannes. “I’m living that as we speak.”

That personal weight comes through in her performance. As Midge, Louis-Dreyfus draws out the character’s spunk and warmth and sharp intellect — the full person — before the slow erasure begins. It’s the kind of voice work that makes you forget you’re watching animation, and it makes the deterioration genuinely hard to watch.

Abbi Jacobson is lively and empathetic as Sarah, anchoring the film’s emotional center with real presence. Bryan Cranston brings what might be his best dad energy since Malcolm in the Middle as Sarah’s father. And the supporting cast the production assembled is something else entirely: Seth Rogen, Sarah Silverman, Bowen Yang, Pamela Adlon, Beanie Feldstein, Wanda Sykes, and Samira Wiley all contribute their voices, giving the film a richness that extends well beyond its core family drama.

An Animated Take on a Very Human Loss

Adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s 2010 graphic memoir by director Leah Nelson, Leavitt herself, and Trev Renney, Tangles charts a specific and deeply felt experience — a daughter watching her mother disappear, while also trying to figure out who she herself is supposed to become. The film follows Sarah from the dawning suspicion that something is wrong (her family initially chalks Midge’s behavior up to menopause) through the diagnosis, and then through the long, grinding years that follow.

It’s territory that’s been covered in film before, and often with devastating force — Michael Haneke’s Amour, Florian Zeller’s The Father, Gaspar Noé’s Vortex. What Tangles offers is something different in register: lighter, more accessible, animated in a lovely black-and-white style that feels bespoke rather than corporate. Nelson and her team have done the genuine work of translating Leavitt’s static graphic panels into something that moves — both literally and emotionally. The result looks alternately cozy and forlorn, which is exactly the right visual language for a story about memory.

The film is a feature debut for Nelson, and she handles the tonal balancing act with care, though she tends to favor the lighter side. That’s not a flaw exactly — but viewers who have been shaped by the bleaker European takes on dementia may find themselves wanting a little more grit, a little more depth in the darker passages. Tangles hits the expected emotional notes — grief, devotion, gratitude — but sometimes it presents the idea of those feelings rather than the feelings themselves. The comedy is gentle and warm without ever quite landing a real laugh. There are moments where the story could use a sharper, more specific texture.

The comparison that hovers over the film, perhaps unfairly, is Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home — another queer, family-tragedy memoir that found achingly specific ways to render the complicated love between a daughter and a parent. Bechdel’s work, and the Tony-winning musical it became, had a plainspoken poetry to it. Tangles operates at a slightly more surface level, which doesn’t make it bad — just a little generic given how personal its source material is.

What Louis-Dreyfus Hopes You Take Away

For Louis-Dreyfus, the film is about something beyond its grief. “Ultimately, this movie is certainly about communication and being in community and the value of family,” she said in Cannes. “All of that is sorely needed right now, certainly in our country, and globally, you could argue. I’m hopeful that this film, when people see it, they might take away a new way of approaching those they love during difficult moments.”

That’s a generous and genuine hope — and honestly, it’s the most accurate description of what Tangles is and what it’s trying to do. This isn’t a film that wants to devastate you. It wants to sit beside you. For anyone who has watched a parent or grandparent slip away to Alzheimer’s, there’s real comfort in seeing that experience rendered with this much care and warmth, even if the film doesn’t always push itself as far as it could.

Tangles is produced by Monarch Media, Point Grey Pictures, Giant Ant Films, and LYLAS Pictures. No wide release date has been announced, but the Cannes premiere puts it firmly on the awards conversation radar — and given Louis-Dreyfus’s track record, that’s a conversation worth watching.

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