The setting is 2027. Having wrapped a five-year shoot in Russia, Jason Statham decides to stay there, living in a village. On his 60th birthday, he organizes a party and invites his Hollywood friends Keanu Reeves, Margo Robbie and Robert Pattinson. The first to arrive is Keanu - with a trunk full of guns. Secrets abound…
Thus begins ‘PMJason’ - the title being a play on words that uses the Russian abbreviation ‘PMZH’ (“postoyannoye mesto zhitelstvo”; “place of registration”). The parody series uses deepfake technology and is full of silly scenes of Keanu and Jason making Russian-style barbecues in the village or Margo haggling while purchasing a used ‘Zhiguli’ car - all of them still trying to get accustomed to Russian ways.
There are 10 episodes, each about five minutes long. You can watch them all here.
Agenda Media Group took three months to shoot the web series and their production director Maria Artemova says it wasn’t a walk in the park: “For instance, the deepfake parts don’t allow for close-up shots and there are certain conditions for light, optics, cameras and the way the actors must stand in vision,” she says, adding that even the amplitude of the movement itself comes into play.
As for the potential legal issues of using people’s likeness for creating parody content - there are none, according to Agenda head Aleksey Parfun. “As long as [it] doesn’t slander or otherwise attack the honor, dignity or reputation of the person.”
Anyhow, the decision to retain the content on a platform is always taken by the moderator, according to the creators. In this case, that’s YouTube.
As for what Statham and the rest of the actors think of the idea, only time will tell!