Jennifer Lopez hunts AI in action-packed Atlas trailer: ‘Like doing a one-woman show’

Set in a world with flying cars and robots, Netflix’s sci-fi action flick Atlas centers on one woman’s mission to take down the world’s first AI terrorist. In the new trailer, debuting exclusively with Entertainment Weekly, we learn that Agent Atlas has spent years hunting an artificial intelligence known as Harlan (Simu Liu), which was “originally engineered to advance humanity” but has “instead nearly ended it.” Despite her deep distrust of machines, Atlas is forced to rely on Smith, an AI voice in her robotic armor (known in the film as an “arc suit”), to survive and complete her mission.

Atlas features extended sequences where Lopez interacts solely with the disembodied voice of her arc suit. This presented a unique challenge for the performer: acting without a human scene partner. “It was like doing a one-woman show,” she explains. “You’re just there, by yourself, imagining everything because it’s all green screen — there was no set to ground you.”

Fortunately, Lopez is no stranger to taking center stage. “As a solo performer who is accustomed to handling difficult workloads, she was especially suited to take on this challenging role,” director Brad Peyton tells EW. Noting that Lopez “is a very intuitive actor,” Peyton adds, “I tailored my entire approach to capturing her performance.”

Part of that involved prompting Lopez as to what her character would be seeing in the scene. “I wanted Brad to yell at me and tell me, ‘We’re crashing! There are meteors coming at you! They’re shooting at you!’ Once you had the beats of the scene, there’s a rhythm to it, and I just had to put all of my imagination, all of my emotion, all of my past experiences and visceral instincts into it,” she says.

The trailer also introduces Sterling K. Brown as Colonel Banks, the leader of the arc-suit-wearing Rangers, who seems to save Atlas’s life during an attack. “This movie really focuses on individuals’ relationships with AI, and Sterling delivers an amazing performance,” Peyton shares.

The director was excited to work with Liu as well, knowing the actor would bring something “fresh and interesting” to the role. “Harlan and Atlas knew each other when Atlas was a child, so the past events between them have shaped Atlas into who she is when we meet her as an adult,” Peyton teases about the relationship between the movie’s protagonist and antagonist.

Will Shepherd and Smith pull it off? Find out this summer!

Atlas hits Netflix on May 24.