Today, Lionsgate, the studio behind films like John Wick and The Hunger Games franchises — announced it is partnering with Runway to create a new custom video generation model aimed at helping “filmmakers, directors and other creative talent scale their work.”
In ai-Collaboration”>A statement on the agreementLionsgate vice president Michael Burns described it as a path toward creating “capital-saving content creation opportunities” for the studio, which sees the technology as “a great tool to augment, enhance and complement our current operations.” Burns also insisted that “a number of our filmmakers are already excited about its potential applications in their pre- and post-production processes.”
Runway co-founder and CEO Cristobal Valenzuela echoed Burns' sentiment about the new model's usefulness as a scaling tool, saying the company's goal is to give filmmakers “new ways to bring their stories to life.”
Specific details about the deal (such as whether creative teams will be compensated if their projects are used as training material for the model) are scarce at this time. ai-firm-runway-1236005554/”>as The Hollywood Reporter gradesThe prospect of being able to keep production costs down could have been one of the big draws for Lionsgate, a studio known for keeping budgets smaller than other entertainment companies.
Those concerns were part of what led California Gov. Gavin Newsom to sign two SAG-AFTRA-backed bills into law earlier this week that will give artists and their heirs more control over how and when studios can use their digitally created likenesses. And later this month, Newsom could very well end up signing SB 1047 into law, another highly controversial piece of legislation that would make ai developers liable for “critical harms” caused by their products.
(We reached out to SAG-AFTRA for comment on the Runway-Lionsgate partnership but did not receive a response in time for publication.)
