This Studio is Planning to Produce 30 AI-Generated Movies in Four Years
A new film, television, and gaming studio is aiming to produce more than 30 projects in the next three to four years with tiny budgets, for Hollywood at least.
Staircase Studios AI claims its proprietary generative AI program, ForwardMotion, can make near-studio-quality movies for less than $500,000. Its debut feature is a film called The Woman With Red Hair, the first five minutes of which has been released online.
Pouya Shahbazian, the producer of the Divergent film franchise, is behind the endeavor with Huffington Post co-founder Kenneth Lerer signing on as a studio partner and Lorenzo di Bonaventura joining as an advisor.
“After packaging and selling 150 projects into the studio system over the past 15 years, I’ve borne witness to far too much inefficiency to continue the status quo. Over the past year, I’ve dedicated myself to pairing ethical AI usage with our industry’s most underutilized assets–overlooked stories waiting to be produced by fantastic writers and directors,” Shahbazian says in a statement.
“Thanks to Kenny and our investors, it’s been thrilling to be able to hire those talented artists to do what they do best—make the kinds of films that the industry actually wants but lacks the risk tolerance to currently greenlight.”
First AI Film
The Woman With Red Hair is directed by Brett Stuart and was taken from the 2016 Black List script by Michael Schatz. The historical thriller follows Johanna “Hannie” Schaft, a Dutch Resistance fighter who became one of WWII’s most skilled assassins. The cast includes Maya-Nika Bewley, Leander Vyvey, Angus Castle-Doughty, and Geoffrey Breton. The film also features original character designs by Pixar alum Teddy Newton (The Incredibles) and artwork from Emmy-winning animator Alfred Gimeno (Tiny Toon Adventures).
The studio is also developing Every Living Creature, a fully animated adventure thriller helmed by Emmy winner Bernie Su. Adapted by J.R. Arellano from a True Adventurous magazine article, the film recounts the harrowing rescue of animals left stranded on Montserrat following the island’s 1997 volcanic eruption.
The comments beneath The Woman With Red Hair are, as one might expect, overwhelmingly negative. People criticize it for “feeling false” and “weird bugged out eyes and bad lip sync.” Whether an AI feature film could ever be a hit remains to be seen, but it does appear like there’s a long way to go before studios such as Staircase can suspend the viewer’s disbelief.
