Disney’s three-year licensing partnership with OpenAI includes just one of exclusivity, Disney CEO Bob Iger told CNBC. The company signed the partnership with OpenAI last week that will bring its iconic characters to the AI firm’s Sora video generator. Once that exclusive year is up, Disney is free to sign similar deals with other AI companies.

The deal gives OpenAI a high-profile content partner, allowing users to draw on more than 200 characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars to create content on Sora. For now, it’s the only AI platform that’s legally permitted to do so. — Read More

… [AI] is not a flood, and it’s not even a tsunami. It’s a landslide, and it will not recede.

I have come to two conclusions. First, no matter how great or terrible you think AI may be, engagement is not an option. You will adapt or you will die. How quickly or how slowly is anyone’s guess. This conclusion came through an experience, one I will describe below.

Second, AI will not destroy us. Instead, we will destroy ourselves, as we give up our minds, our agency, and our social institutions to AI control.

The future is not Orwellian; it is Huxleyan. — Read More

Disney has put its chips in on AI.

The Hollywood giant has signed a major deal with OpenAI, investing $1B in the artificial intelligence giant and handing over characters from Frozen and Star Wars to generative AI video app Sora.

It is comfortably the most significant collaboration between a Hollywood studio and an AI company to date, and suggests Disney has taken the view: if you can’t beat them, join them. — Read More

Warner Bros. started with distribution. Just after the turn of the century, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner bought a second-hand projector and started showing short films in Ohio and Pennsylvania mining towns; in 1907 they bought their first permanent theater in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Around the same time the brothers also began distributing films to other theaters, and in 1908 began producing their own movies in California. In 1923 the brothers formally incorporated as Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc., becoming one of the five major Hollywood Studios.

What the brothers realized early on was that distribution just wasn’t a very good business: you had to maintain the theater and find films to show, and your profit was capped by your capacity, which you had to work diligently to fill out; after all, every empty seat in a showing was potential revenue that disappeared forever. What was far more lucrative was making the films shown in those theaters: you could film a movie once and make money on it again and again.

… Netflix, which was founded in 1997, also started with distribution, specifically of DVDs-by-mail; the streaming service that the company is known for today launched in 2007, 100 years after the Warner brothers bought their theater. The differences were profound: because Netflix was on the Internet, it was available literally everywhere; there were no seats to clean or projectors to maintain, and every incremental customer was profit.  — Read More

#vfx

On the evening of Friday, September 26, I had the pleasure of hosting a film screening that showcased works created with artificial intelligence (AI). This was the event I had previously announced in my last posting.

The venue was Tōshunji Temple in Yamaguchi City, a Rinzai Zen temple with a history of around 500–600 years. At the same time, its grounds also host contemporary artworks, a horse, and a pottery studio — functioning almost like a community art center for the present day.

… It was in this city, at Tōshunji, that we hosted the international AI Film Festival organized by OMNI, based in Sydney, Australia. … One of the main goals was to raise literacy around AI.  — Read More

Let’s be frank: everyone thinks they can act. On a weekly basis, I have people ask me about “getting some voice over work for extra money” or doing a show “for fun.” And I have to wonder if any other industry is viewed this way. Do doctors have friends who suggest popping in for a quick organ transplant for kicks? Do relatives ask cops if they can borrow their gun and badge for a day? There’s a reason acting is so aspirational and yet so hard to succeed at.

When stories broke over the weekend about what people are calling the first AI-generated actress, Tilly Norwood, the response from Hollywood was so negative that one really had to wonder what the creators expected. In a time where the industry has been decimated by COVID, strikes and changing business models, who thought this would be celebrated? Celebrities from Kiersey Clemons to Melissa Barrera quickly weighed in, with the former noting: “How gross, read the room.” Perhaps Oscar-nominated actor Toni Collette said it best, when she posted the story with a series of screaming-face emojis. — Read More

#vfx

You may have missed the AI movie Critterz when it appeared as a short animation a couple of years ago. It didn’t exactly set the world on fire, with comments on YouTube including “I’d call this garbage, but that’d be an insult to garbage” and “This was the worst 5 minutes I will never get back”.

Nevertheless, it seems OpenAI, the maker of Chat GPT, saw potential in the ‘nature documentary turned comedy’. It’s putting its name behind the experimental short’s expansion into a feature-length movie intended for a debut at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2026 followed by a full cinema release. Will it show that AI is ready to take on Hollywood and slash the costs of filmmaking, or will it do the opposite like ‘Netflix of AI’ Showrunner? — Read More

You knew it was bound to happen, and now, it has. The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI is lending its services to the production of a feature-length animated film called Critterz, which is aiming to be done in time for next year’s Cannes Film Festival. That would put its production time at nine months, which is unheard of for a feature-length animated film, but that’s because it’ll be created using AI.

According to the paper, using OpenAI’s resources, production companies Vertigo Films and Native Foreign will hire actors to voice characters created by feeding original drawings into generative AI software. The entire film is expected to cost less than $30 million and will only take about 30 people to complete. — Read More