The Old & New Hollywood Guard Wielding AI’s Might

The AI gold rush has hit showbiz, even as the tech-fueled race to riches remains fraught. Morphing at a mind-bendingly fast pace, artificial intelligence technology has roiled the entertainment industry, which remains split between those convinced that it can be a powerful tool for creative expression and those wary of its potential to introduce “cinema illiteracy” and cut humans out of the equation. Variety takes a look at how 10 companies are taming the AI beast with specific use cases that creatives can get behind in a way that keeps them firmly in control and respects copyrights. Some of the industry’s household names have been at the forefront of AI. This spring Netflix announced the surprise acquisition of Ben Affleck’s InterPositive AI start-up. Amazon MGM and Lionsgate have both appointed AI leaders, and Google, a foe and friend alike to creatives, has partnered with Oscar-winning talent through its DeepMind unit in a bid to strengthen its relationship with filmmakers. Popular on Variety Alongside the old guard, there’s a new one: a collection of companies not afraid to ruffle feathers, promising an unprecedented — and controversial — leap in how films are made. Such is the case with Particle 6, the brash creator of AI “actress” Tilly Norwood, and the rabble-rousers at Higgsfield. Both upstarts have produced or are producing AI-generated films to showcase their technology. Other creative-minded AI companies include Runway, which is bullish on the democratization of filmmaking, and the Martin Scorsese-backed Black Forest Labs. What’s behind Hollywood’s new AI arms race? “It’s a maturing of some of the tools where it actually can be used now,” says Erik Weaver, the principal of AI and emergent media at the University of Southern California’s Entertainment Technology Center. And at the same time, “a lot of the studios are also seeing that land rush,” he adds — meaning, in other words, that they see the need to get on board or get left behind. Netflix last year said it was “all in” on incorporating AI throughout its business, but it was unclear exactly what that meant. Then it spent nearly $600 million on Ben Affleck’s secret AI company. The purchase of the tools-focused InterPositive in March signaled both the company’s investment in the space — with Affleck’s filmmaking background and film-focused team as the core drivers behind the purchase — and its belief in partnering with creatives as it experiments with the technology. Since then, Netflix has revealed that roughly 300 programs across its library have incorporated generative AI in some fashion, it’s experimenting with AI-animated projects (though none are actively in the works) and it has worked with the AI audio firm ElevenLabs to weave in an AI replica of Gene Wilder’s voice for its upcoming reality show “Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.” For some, the endorsement from the world’s biggest streamer helped validate AI’s presence in entertainment. “We really wanted to help folks contextualize and understand that AI is impacting all different parts of the production chain, and some of the examples from our different filmmakers using it kind of hit at the core of that kind of thesis,” says Girish Balakrishnan, Netflix’s senior director of creative innovation, about disclosing the 300 AI-enabled projects. “But kind of in [how] creator-led, filmmakers leading those productions are doing it, and we just want folks to be aware that that’s the state of things.” It’s an approach adopted by Amazon MGM, the tech giant’s studio arm that has developed its own AI wing. The studio last year appointed Albert Cheng, previously head of Prime Video in the U.S., as its inaugural head of “AI Studios” and charged him with integrating — though not mandating — the technology’s use throughout its production pipeline. Since then, Amazon MGM has hosted its “AI on the Lot” conference to discuss AI’s place in Hollywood, where it announced a slate of AI-animated shows (though one, from “The Book of Life” director Jorge R. Gutierrez, ended after Gutierrez backed out following an outcry over his plans for an AI-animated project). “AI helps the production pipeline move faster, so our customers won’t have to wait 24 months between seasons of a show,” Cheng says. “The goal is to figure out how we can put these tools into creators’ hands to help them make more series, more movies.” Not to be outdone, Lionsgate appointed industry veteran Kathleen Grace as its first-ever chief AI officer in February, tasking her with overseeing the studio’s strategy regarding the tech. The company hasn’t unveiled plans for how it’s using AI with its own IP, but in June expanded its yearslong deal with Runway through acquiring an equity stake to tap into one of its franchises for an AI-generated short-form series. “The thing we’re interested in is how do we use generative AI to find new opportunities and new audiences for the content we own?” Grace says. “New ways to distribute it, new ways to think about it, and that, to me, is the interesting thing about AI. It’s not just an efficiency play. It’s ‘Can we bring new life or new audiences to things by either using the intelligence that it offers us to make us distribute it more effectively or smartly?’ Or use AI and large language models and large amounts of social intelligence data to understand, ‘Oh, maybe there’s a subculture that is really into this movie that we have in our catalog, and we should be marketing it to them.’” Google, meanwhile, has tried to integrate itself into the creative community. The internet company has rankled some in entertainment and media over how it has trained its AI models. But Eli Collins, DeepMind’s vice president of product, says the company helps build custom models for many of its partnerships, such as the AI-powered production of “The Wizard of Oz” at the Sphere in Las Vegas, and will potentially be involved in the upcoming “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at the venue. That’s helped earn the trust of directors like Darren Aronofsky, whose AI studio Primordial Soup partnered with Google, and director Doug Liman, who helped develop an immersive film, “Asteroid,” for the company’s extended-reality app. “When we work within a domain, we think it’s really critical to work with people in that domain,” Collins says. In video, “we’ve worked with people, industrial designers, we’ve worked with illustrators, and as videos progress, that’s really allowed us to go more into film and storytelling generally as a medium.” Google’s AI entertainment push included a $75 million investment this summer in indie film darling A24, which is researching new tools in partnership with DeepMind. That pact spawned a backlash among those incredulous that A24 was getting in the AI game; responding to the brouhaha, A24 said, “We’d rather have a seat at the table than [sit] on the sidelines.” Collins is tight-lipped about that partnership, as well as the company’s potential involvement in the Sphere’s upcoming production of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” As established studios and big tech companies plant their AI flags, a new crop of disruptors has emerged. Particle 6, the U.K. company behind Tilly Norwood, caused a firestorm over the boisterous claim the “actor” would soon be signed to an agency (agencies said “no thanks”) and stirred fears that Tilly would take actors’ jobs (leading to new SAG-AFTRA guidelines on synthetic performers). CEO Eline Van der Velden says the industry got it wrong. She says Tilly’s whole purpose is to exist for “underserved” audiences and that the AI character was never intended to replace human actors. “Everything would need to be AI,” she said. “That’s where Tilly makes sense.” Van der Velden says the controversial Tilly-led film “Misaligned,” which kicked off an anticipated 12-month production cycle this month, is simply meant for those audiences eager for more “niche” content. She also thinks Tilly herself could be a new model for human actors to work with, akin to motion capture. “In a way, I’m a puppeteer, because especially when I’m doing motion capture, where I’m the creative director of her acting,” she says. “This is what I think actors in the future will be in charge of.” For companies invested in the intersection of AI and entertainment, much of the work to date has been proofs-of-concept. Fountain 0’s debut of the docudrama “Dreams of Violets” at the Tribeca Festival in June made it one of the first fully AI-generated films to premiere at a major festival. The company also made a knockoff of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” dubbed “Odysseus: The Fall,” hoping to show how close the technology can get to producing a similar version of a $250 million summer blockbuster. (Unsurprisingly, not everyone agreed that it was in the same ballpark.) Ash Koosha, CEO of Fountain 0, says his goal is to help people execute their own visions for movies, without the dozens of crew members typically needed for a feature film. The company also inked a deal with “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin, who licensed her likeness to the company to help adapt her novels. “I think we’re going to see with AI the power of a $400 million film, the look of it, the reality of it, in the hand of an arthouse filmmaker,” he says. Along those lines, Runway and Higgsfield have made moves to get their respective generative-AI platforms into the hands of aspiring filmmakers. Higgsfield has hosted contests and inked likeness-licensing partnerships, while Runway has held its AI Festival each year since 2022. Both companies have given creators a chance to bring their stories and intellectual property to life, a la the director Kane Parsons’ journey from YouTube creator to theaters with his thriller “Backrooms.” “New technology unlocks new creative formats, and this is just another example of the sort of IP or celebrities crossover, something which they couldn’t do typically,” Higgsfield CEO Alex Mashrabov says. “This is just a great example of how a traditional story, how a traditional script, can be applied to these modern realities.” Runway’s festivals have drawn the likes of director Ron Howard and Netflix’s Balakrishnan. Co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela says the company plans to drop “AI” from the title next year in the spirit of its belief that, after this moment of “transition,” the use of AI will be as commonplace in cinema as cameras. A future like that takes the backing of those who know how to make movies — and some heavyweights have come out in support of using AI tools in the craft. “I don’t think there’s going to be a day or a time or a month when someone’s gonna say, ‘OK, this is the day we stop saying this is AI video or not AI video,’” Valenzuela says. “It just happens naturally. It’s a transition, and we’re going through a transition right now.” Scorsese’s backing of the German AI company Black Forest Labs represented the most public endorsement from a film visionary of the technology’s place in the production process. But for the company itself, it was a partnership tied to research and exploration of how the tools could work for creatives. While Scorsese hasn’t commented on the partnership (and the start-up won’t say whether he’s using its Flux models on his next film), the revelation of his participation marked another divisive moment for the industry. “AI in the creative space is an emotive issue,” says Ben Brooks, Black Forest’s head of public policy. “We’re sensitive to the depth of feeling across the community, but at the same time, building these bridges, having this kind of dialogue, is really important to understand how we can make the technology work for the community.” How fully Hollywood deploys AI may be held in check by one key factor: Public sentiment appears to remain strongly against the technology’s use in movies and TV. Social media users flamed the use of AI in Eli Roth’s “Ice Cream Man” and the David Dastmalchian-led “Late Night With the Devil,” among others. Many people fear AI’s societal impact. Director Jon Erwin, who founded Innovative Dreams, an AI offshoot of his Amazon-affiliated Wonder Project initiative that fuses generative technology into its projects, thinks such fears stem from people lumping productive use cases together with forms of AI “slop.” Erwin, who has incorporated generative-AI technology into his Amazon MGM show “House of David” and his Angel Studios film “Young Washington,” says artificial intelligence should be seen as part of the long arc of technology adoption by creators. “There is a collision of technology and art,” Erwin says. “Hollywood has always been an art form that is a fusion of tools that are disruptive and given to artists — and used in ways no one would expect.” *** Amazon MGM Studios AI focus: Company in May greenlit three shows under its “GenAI Creators’ Fund,” including shows from “Book of Life” director Jorge Gutierrez (who backed out) and ex-Nickelodeon president Albie Hecht; the home of Jon Erwin’s shows, adopting the filmmaker’s use of the technology; developed “Project Nara” with AWS, a workspace for creators using AI. Key player: Albert Cheng, head of AI studios Why they matter: The studio arm of the e-commerce behemoth is in pole position among major studios to harness the power of proprietary tech, prodigious computing power and top-tier content production. Black Forest Labs Image and video generator AI focus: Martin Scorsese put the company on the map when he cited it as helping him plot out the storyboard for an upcoming film. Investors include BroadLight Capital and CAA co-founder Mike Ovitz. Key players: David Dorfman, co-founder and managing partner; Kevin Yorn and Rick Yorn, co-founders and general partners Why they matter: Because Martin Scorsese said so. Fountain 0 Filmmaking and streaming platform AI focus: “Dreams of Violets” accepted into Tribeca, a breakthrough for AI movies; recently licensed “The View” host Sunny Hostin’s image for AI movie adaptations of her romance novels. Key player: Ash Koosha, creator and CEO Why they matter: Koosha has an expansive vision of what AI filmmaking can achieve. Google DeepMind AI research laboratory AI focus: Its work with filmmakers Doug Liman and Darren Aronofsky and A24 underscore its pursuit of Hollywood. It’s also focused on AI experiences, like “The Wizard of Oz” at the Sphere in Las Vegas, and its potential involvement in the venue’s “Rocky Horror Picture Show” production. Key player: Eli Collins, VP of product for Google DeepMind, Márcia Mayer, head of production for DeepMind Why they matter: Because they’re part of Google. Higgsfield AI AI video platform AI focus: “Hell Grind” and “Cully Hill Boys” showcased what an AI-generated action-adventure could look like — even if the final product wasn’t great; AI-assisted films and licensing influencers’ likenesses for a project. Key player: Alex Mashrabov, CEO and founder Why they matter: Higgsfield has hosted AI contests and inked likeness-licensing pacts. Innovative Dreams Virtual production studio AI focus: Director Jon Erwin has forged an indie path through his Wonder Project venture, and he’s also been a maverick who has publicly embraced the efficiency of AI tools to enable creatives. The filmmaker’s production technology venture Innovative Dreams launched earlier this year with AI firm Luma. Key players: Jon Erwin, Luma CEO Amit Jain Why they matter: Wonder Project has impressed by building an indie film and TV business in just a few years since its 2021 launch. AI’s potential could turbocharge that growth and Erwin’s experimentation could attract others to his firm’s tech. Lionsgate AI focus: In 2024, the studio set a deal to train an AI model on the company’s film library in order to generate new content. It also hired its first-ever AI division head. Key player: Kathleen Grace, chief AI officer Why they matter: Lionsgate has the kind of huge library that could be attractive to a content-hungry AI firm with deep pockets. The studio is seen as a bellwether for Hollywood M&A. Netflix AI focus: The streaming giant says flatly that more than 300 of its programs use AI in production. It surprised the industry with a $587 million deal to buy Ben Affleck’s InterPositive startup. It’s even bankrolling Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s AI thriller “2034.” Key players: Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters; Girish Balakrishnan, senior director of creative innovation; Ben Affleck Why they matter: Because they’re Netflix. Particle 6 Content studio AI focus: The company is home to the synthetic actress Tilly Norwood, whose debut as a film festival PR stunt triggered fears about AI creations taking the place of human actors. Key players: CEO Eline Van der Velden Why they matter: Love Tilly or hate Tilly, Van der Velden has proven her ability to garner attention and spur outrage among anti-AI purists. Runway AI research, audio and video image generation AI focus: A leader in AI generation and exhibition; expansive partnership with Lionsgate to work on IP illustrates how Hollywood is willing to cede its most valuable assets to AI models; showcases AI films at its annual bi-coastal festival, which this year saw its biggest turnout and included Ron Howard. Key player: Cristóbal Valenzuela, co-founder and CEO Why they matter: The former NYU Tisch researcher has gained the trust of major filmmakers and studios to help them learn how to use AI tools.