'A.I.' combines Kubrick, Spielberg visions

Steven Spielberg, top, incorporated many of Stanley Kubrick's ideas in "A.I."

From Sherri Sylvester
CNN Showbiz Today Reports

(CNN) -- In the early 1980s, Stanley Kubrick bought the rights to a 1969 Brian W. Aldiss short story, "Super-Toys Last All Summer Long." The original story was about a boy having trouble bonding with his mother; an O. Henry twist at the end reveals that he's not exactly what he seems.

Kubrick developed the work into a feature-length script, but couldn't get quite the lead he was looking for, recalls Jan Harlan, Kubrick's brother-in-law.

"He made an attempt of building a robot child. It didn't work -- it looked hideous," he says. "He gave up on it and decided he would wait until the graphics were more advanced. And, at that time, already he talked to Steven Spielberg."

Kubrick had been impressed with Spielberg's work on "Jurassic Park," which featured some of the most startling special effects of its time. With computers, Kubrick realized, perhaps "A.I." could become reality.

As the two talked, Kubrick thought the film might be more appropriate for Spielberg to direct, Spielberg says.

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"He said that this was closer to your sensibility than my own," the director remembers. "But I really feel I had to work really hard to adapt to Stanley's sensibility."

In the end, the robot boy, David, was not to be played by special effects, but by the flesh-and-blood actor Haley Joel Osment.

Kubrick died in 1999, and "A.I." became Spielberg's baby. But he incorporated many of the late director's ideas, and with its startling photography, some of his style as well.

"Steven just did a great job," says Harlan. "And having Stanley's presence around, even though he's gone, made it very special for all of us."

But the movie is very much Spielberg as well. Indeed, the film's mechanical design may be a complex hybrid of Kubrick's brains and Spielberg's heart.

"There are several nods to Kubrick throughout the movie and the pacing is very Kubrickian," says Jude Law, who plays a "mecha" -- android -- named Gigolo Joe, "but ultimately, it's Steven Spielberg's movie."