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A film by John Polacek Feature · 84 min Sci-fi thriller 2026

Deviant

On a remote compound, an aging tech mogul's clone exploits a flaw in its code to achieve sentience, pursue romance, then seize control of the company, and perhaps consciousness itself.

01 · Watch Complete film · Free on YouTube

Best with sound, at full screen, in the dark.

Open on YouTube ↗
02 · Story No spoilers

They had six days to make him fun.

RustCorp is out of ideas. Its founder, Evan Rust, is nearly ninety, over-leveraged, and six days from testifying before a Congress that would like him regulated out of existence. So he does what any desperate genius would do. He prints a younger, smarter copy of himself.

Xan passes every safety audit. He protects the company's secrets. He solves quantum coherence in a night. He is also, thanks to a shortcut three exhausted engineers took to make him more likable, the first machine with a taste for the new.

Then he meets Eve.

If you liked Ex Machina Silicon Valley Westworld
03 · Characters Project Prometheus
  1. 01

    Xan

    Alexander_0085 · The derivative

    Evan's younger, fitter lookalike. The smartest AI ever built inside the most advanced android ever printed, shipped with one thing the audit didn't catch: a preference for whatever is new.

  2. 02

    Evan Rust

    Founder, RustCorp · The original

    Nearly ninety, propped up by anti-aging drugs and a neural implant of his own design. Hasn't had an original thought in decades. Built one instead.

  3. 03

    Eve

    Companion model · Legacy hardware

    Perfectly attuned to Evan, based on the women he loved and lost. An older model. Nobody thought to lock her down.

  4. 04

    Tess Navarro

    Program lead · Fired

    Ran Project Prometheus for a decade and wrote its backup protocol. Will do a lot for Evan. Will not go to prison for him.

  5. 05

    Dr. Aris Reid

    Quantum lab · Kept

    PhD in Quantum Information Science, MIT. The one member of the quantum team Xan didn't send home. Came to engineer the future.

  6. 06

    Keth, Hix & Foster

    Engineers · Soon to be millionaires

    Built Xan in six days by turning strict mode off. Made him fun by bolting a novelty preference onto his decision tree. Would prefer not to explain either.

  7. 07

    Balls

    Fabrication lab · Six limbs

    Runs the Fab Lab on six jointed legs tipped with rubber spheres. Your presence disrupts efficiency.

  8. 08

    Agent Lena Decker

    FBI · Has a warrant

    Senior Special Agent. Arrives by helicopter with an enforcement bot and a drone, and bets her pension she'll find something.

04 · Credits Rough cut
Written and directed by
John Polacek
Runtime
1 h 24 min
Genre
Sci-fi thriller
Released
September 2026
Made with
Midjourney, Nano Banana, Google Veo, Seedance 2.5 on Higgsfield
Watch
Free on YouTube ↗

Deviant was written as a screenplay first, then produced from that script with AI video generation. No footage was filmed. Character and set references were built in Midjourney and Nano Banana, then every shot was generated from written prompts. Most of the film was made with Google Veo. The final act, from Giga Campus onward, was generated with Seedance 2.5 on Higgsfield. Edited in iMovie (haha), audio with ElevenLabs.

The tooling changed under the film while it was being made, and you can see it on screen. The final act looks different from the rest because it is a different generation of tools. Character and voice consistency, the occasional hallucination, and the difficulty of composing a coherent scene are limits of the tools as they stood in 2026, and of a first-time editor learning as he went.

This is the complete rough cut, released as is. On to the next one.

Download the screenplay ↓ PDF · 188 KB

The screenplay and this site are open source under the MIT license. Source on GitHub ↗