How Playdate Secured a PG-13 Using DeepEditor™

Playdate, an action comedy starring Isla Fisher and Kevin James, used Flawless’ DeepEditor to seamlessly replace five profane lines late in post-production – securing a PG-13 rating without reshoots, creative compromise, or losing the film’s comedic edge. 

It’s late in the day as Isla Fisher and Kevin James step into a park to shoot a scene for Playdate, an action comedy that would later debut at #1 on Prime Video.

The day in Maple Ridge, British Columbia, has already been a marathon: a lacrosse game, parking lot sequence, shifting set ups. 

And now an impending sunset. With the natural light quickly disappearing, the team would have to be pragmatic. Shoot wide and close simultaneously. Grab as many takes as possible.

What they didn’t clock in the rush was that they had not captured profanity-free “safe” takes. 

Unbeknownst to the team during the shoot, this park scene – along with several others – would later set the film on a path toward an MPA ‘R’ rating.

And that would cause problems with the movie's eventual distribution.

A Late-Stage Curveball

During test screenings, “it kind of became really clear that the studio wanted the movie to be PG-13”, recalls producer Jason Benoit, who we interviewed over Zoom in December 2025 following the film’s successful release. 

For Jason, this wasn’t a surprise. The film was meant to be an edgy, laugh-out-loud comedy: a movie born from a mantra: “Are you having fun?” The kind of film he could watch with his kids and a reminder of why he fell in love with movies in the first place. 

But with everything in the locked cut meticulously poured over, how would the team remove curse words and secure a PG-13 – without disturbing the tone, or voice of the director? 

Because what was at stake went beyond the distribution: the creative vision of director Luke Greenfield – the renowned director with an instinct for blending heart, humor, and cinematic style with films like The Girl Next Door (2004) – was at stake, too.

“I think the director's vision and a movie's vision is really so important because the reason that you hire somebody or a particular somebody to come on to do a project is because they have a voice,” says Jason. 

Changing anything about the film, at this stage, put the very essence of the film at risk.

Here’s Our Problem: We Don’t Have It

The team was in post in Los Angeles. As far as they saw it, four ideas of what to do: recut with different takes, edit out swearing lines or scenes, standard ADR, or reshoot. 

Trawling back through the rushes, the editor looked at many different takes and performances. But the performances just didn’t have the same edge in other takes. And losing those moments altogether wouldn’t work, either; the sequencing, the editing and the performances were not holding together.

“They just didn't match up, not even closely, and in a way that either we had to cut the entire joke and beat or, it was really going to be less humorous, less organic,” says Jason. “The director had a creative vision. He liked certain performances. He wanted comedy in there, and those existed in the takes that he had picked that had the R-rated language in them.”

Nor was standard ADR an option. “We didn't want to jam ‘frick’, for instance, inside of a closeup of a mouth,” he says. “There's things you can do with ADR that can mask. There's things you can do with sound that can mask. But when you have lines on camera and close up, you are incredibly tied to what your solutions are.”

With the actors already scattered across other projects and countries, reshooting was out of the question. “The cost prohibitive aspect of that was too much and, let alone the logistics of it,” Jason says. The team was doing post in LA. The actors were on comedy tours, on the east coast, or, in one case, in Australia.

“None of the traditional options were really options for us,” Jason says “or at least ones that sort of, satisfied both parties, right?”

We Need To Fix These Five Lines

When the post team suggested using Flawless, Jason was immediately open to the idea, having seen our work on Fall, where 36 ‘f-bombs’ were removed. With the technology having continued to advance since that film, work began to create the necessary censorship edits. 

To test new, safe lines of dialogue, the team recorded a few alternative, same-length lines. They tested the results to give the director a sense of what the final result would be like, exporting the results as draft vubs – low cost, HD outputs from DeepEditor, built for fast iteration in creative, offline editorial workflows. 

“When we first saw those, those initial tests that came back, you know, it's kind of mind blowing,” says Jason. 

“What was really key for us was this ability to pre-visualize. And to see how it was going to work in multiple forms,” says Jason. “It was the ability to lock it in, but with more confidence than what a traditional VFX process would have allowed us to do.”

With the team confident it had found the solution, all that had to happen now was for the cast to record a few variations of ADR lines. 

“We explained to [the cast] the problems that we had,” says Jason. The producers spent time talking with the cast to give the problem context: five lines were standing in between the film and the PG-13 rating it needed. “And I think as long as you’re communicating, you’re having everybody understand how this tool works and that it does maintain the fidelity of what the production really hopes for.”

The cast was also reassured by the fact that Flawless’ tools are never used to train its underlying models: their likeness, performances, voices would only be used to fix the specific, uploaded shot. “Alan [Ritchson] even said, look, it’d be great to be able to watch this movie with my kids,” says Jason.

With new lines of dialogue locked and recorded, John worked with Flawless to start iterating and creating options. 

“The key for us was to try to make it feel as authentic and real as possible within the tone of these characters,” says Jason. “And so it really was kind of mind blowing to see that.”

“But was also even more mind blowing was the ability to say, ‘Okay, well, that's not quite perfect… let's try this line’. And that was so cool to know that you weren't restricted completely to one thing.” 

Now, with newly-created visual dubs, the director was able “to maintain that pace, that rhythm that we landed on based on the audience feedback, based on what the movie was telling us.” 

With the scenes no longer upended, Jason could lean back into the phrase that had guided him throughout: "Are we having fun?"

With PG-13 secured, Playdate debuted number one in 46 countries on Prime Video

 

“There's a real clear line drawn between the work that Flawless did and the movie being a PG-13 movie versus R – that directly spoke to the success and the viewership of this film and opened up a four quadrant viewership.”

—Jason Benoit, Producer, Playdate 

 

Playdate was released simultaneously in the US and in 45 other countries, including the UK, in November 2025. 

“It allowed families to watch the movie together, and that, you know, I think directly supports the fact that this movie debuted number one in the world, in 46 different countries for Amazon. We were the number one not only movie but content that was on the platform. We were number one in the United States for two weeks or more,” he continued.

Flawless’ technology, in other words, did exactly what Jason and his team needed it to do. Director Luke Greenfield got to maintain the integrity of the scenes and comedy, something “which I know Luke was very happy with,” says Jason. And at the same time, Amazon secured the PG-13 rating it needed for distribution, making for a bigger hit on its platform. 

Thanks to censorship editing, a key use case of DeepEditor, this was all possible without disrupting the tone or comedy of the film, or bringing everybody back for reshoots.

In addition to solving the direct problem Jason and his team had, DeepEditor, Flawless’ AI-assisted editing tool available as both a web app and an Avid plugin, offered the Playdate team a number of distinct advantages:

More Creative Control

The Playdate team were able to test several options in a low cost way before committing to altered lines that the director was happy with before anything was final.

Unmatched Visual Fidelity

The Playdate team could adhere to the picture quality standards required by the film and streaming industries. Flawless’s final vub outputs offered them up to 16-bit 8K resolution and lossless color. 

Clean Data. Clear Rights.

The Playdate team could trust that AI models used to tweak the actors’ lips were ethically sourced and legally cleared. The footage they uploaded of Isla Fisher, Alan Ritchson, Kevin James and other stars was used only in relation to the specific project, and never to train general models. 

Studio-Grade Security

The Playdate team’s content was safe: handled in an environment that meets TPN security standards, with rigorous media handling protocols trusted by the world's biggest studios.

Thanks to Jason Benoit for his interview as part of this case study.

Ready To Discover Assistive AI?  With DeepEditor, Playdate was able to make five scenes profanity-free, secure a PG-13 and make #1 on Prime Video. See how assistive AI tools can support your production.