In a striking marriage of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the buzzy entertainment company A24 and the pioneering AI lab Google DeepMind are joining forces.<\/p>\n
The studio of Marty Supreme and Backrooms will develop tools in concert with the London-based neural-network giant that can then be used by the studio\u2019s filmmakers while also being funneled back into the Google ecosystem. As part of the deal, DeepMind will invest $75 million in the project. The news was first reported<\/a> by The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n \u201cWe believe the best way to develop tools that empower artists is to work directly with them,\u201d Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said in a statement posted on Google\u2019s website. \u201cBy collaborating with filmmakers and industry leaders like A24 from the beginning, we can build new AI features to support artists in authentic, meaningful storytelling that helps enable their creative vision.\u201d<\/p>\n More from The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n The pact is a multi-year one and is not exclusive, allowing A24 to work with other AI companies and models (and DeepMind with other studios).<\/p>\n DeepMind already has collaborations with individual filmmakers like Darren Aronofsky, but this is the first known partnership with a full-fledged studio. Google is one of the few tech giants to have a video generator, the well-regarded Veo, and the deal is likely to further involve them in that game.<\/p>\n For the company, a partnership with A24 provides access to a roster of highly respected auteurs to refine their tools \u2014 valuable currency as tech giants seek to improve their models \u2014 while also, not insignificantly, providing a kind of street-cred seal-of-approval that could induce other companies and filmmakers to work with them. At a time when top creatives like Guillermo del Toro and Vince Gilligan express deep skepticism about those tools\u2019 place in the filmmaking process, such blessings are not just nice add-ons but existentially vital for the tech giants.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the deal catches up A24 to where some of its competitors have already landed, with Netflix <\/a>and Amazon Studios <\/a>developing tools for filmmakers and Lionsgate building models<\/a> in collaboration with hot startup player Runway AI.<\/p>\n A24\u2019s deal suddenly vaults the company into that category; a boutique entertainment firm without the kind of deep pockets and institutional knowledge of an Amazon now suddenly has entree to that world. The program will be run under Scott Belsky, a longtime digital guru at Adobe and the co-founded of creative platform Behance who has a team of about two dozen at the studio, a fairly large number gives its otherwise efficient staffing. Belsky was hired <\/a>in early 2025 to oversee digital initiatives for A24.<\/p>\n The move is part of what is sure to be a growing trend of content brands, from film studios to individual journalists, building bespoke AI tools they can draw from to utilize particular styles as opposed to the kitchen-sink models as currently designed. Such efforts allow for more customized outputs, though skeptics wonder if they\u2019ll contain sufficient data to be as useful as traditional generation models.<\/p>\n In a social post Belsky sought to argue for this customized approach. \u201cThere are better uses of storytelling tech to discover, ones that preserve creative control and support creative risk-taking,\u201d he wrote<\/a>, seeming to contrast his approach with a more catch-all video-general model. \u201cThese workflows are TBD, but excited for our Labs team to work w\/ DeepMind team in this research partnership. Shared curiosities, and asking the right questions, lead us to the better way.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the studio was already prototyping a storyboard tool, following on the heels of Martin Scorsese announcing several weeks ago <\/a>that he was doing the same thing. Storyboarding is becoming an increasingly popular use case for AI, allowing creatives to pitch and iterate while still keeping consumer releases human-led.<\/p>\n Still, the partnership is sure to accelerate the advent of AI into movies and television we watch, while also deepening a debate about how, or if, directors, should use these weighted models as part of their workflow. Some noted auteurs have taken a decided no to that stance, but a growing group of A-listers seem at least willing to entertain it.<\/p>\n The announcement fits A24\u2019s brand as a forward-looking and even at times tech-minded entertainment company \u2014 The Brutalist controversially used AI for voice-overs while Everything Everywhere All At Once was filled with tech. It also figures in interestingly to the biggest theatrical success in its history, Kane Parsons\u2019 Backrooms, which came out last month. The film was of course directed by a filmmaker who honed his craft and built an audience on a Google\/YouTube platform, while influencers themselves are expected to use more AI tools in the coming year.<\/p>\n Parsons, however, has expressed far more criticism for AI himself, telling<\/a> The Australian recently that \u201cIf I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would. Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.\u201d\u201d<\/p>\n Best of The Hollywood Reporter<\/p>\n Sign up for THR’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a striking marriage of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the buzzy entertainment company A24 and the pioneering AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[44199,35254,5044,7718,45215,44693,132,7543,5887,39827,45028,44544,45216],"class_list":["post-83655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-google","tag-a24","tag-backrooms","tag-deepmind","tag-demis-hassabis","tag-entertainment-company","tag-filmmakers","tag-google","tag-google-deepmind","tag-hollywood","tag-runway-ai","tag-scott-belsky","tag-the-hollywood-reporter","tag-vince-gilligan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}