I, Robot

Alex Proyas’s 2004 film did not begin with Asimov. In 1995 Jeff Vintar wrote a spec script called Hardwired: a murder mystery in the Agatha Christie mould, set entirely at one crime scene, with a single human character interrogating artificial intelligences as suspects. Vintar has described it as close to a stage play. Fox acquired the Asimov rights afterwards and fused the two; Akiva Goldsman came in late to rewrite it around Will Smith. Both layers are still visible: the scenes where Spooner sits across a table from a robot are the residue of the original script, while the chases were added for the star. What you get depends on which you came for. Then there is how the world is furnished. The Chicago of 2035 rests on a thick layer of product placement: Converse shoes, FedEx, and an Audi RSQ designed for the film. Some of the future texture is a showroom, and it is hard to stop seeing once noticed. The film took one Academy nomination, for visual effects, and lost to Spider-Man 2. Not for you if you want fidelity to Asimov. Harlan Ellison wrote a faithful adaptation in the late 1970s that Asimov thought could be the first genuinely adult science fiction film; it was never shot, and this is not it.