Movies

AI Just Changed Hollywood Forever

BBG News

The connection between Hollywood and artificial intelligence (AI) is marked by significant tension. Many filmmakers and industry professionals strongly oppose the idea of incorporating AI in movie production, fearing it may serve as a poor imitation of human creativity. Recently, Disney and Universal filed a lawsuit against Midjourney for alleged copyright violations.

Despite numerous AI firms striving to make headway in Hollywood, one of these startups, Moonvalley, made a significant stride recently. On a Tuesday, they publicly unveiled a fully-authorized, top-tier video model, accessible to all.

Moonvalley, established by engineers from DeepMind, maintains strong connections within the movie business. In fact, it owns Asteria Film Co., an AI film studio launched this year by filmmaker Natasha Lyonne and her partner Bryn Mooser. Asteria has been providing guidance to Moonvalley regarding the creation of its AI model named Marey. This model can now be accessed by filmmakers through various subscription plans, priced at $14.99, $34.99, and $149.99 per month.

As a movie enthusiast, I’m excited about the potential role Marey could play in bridging the gap between Hollywood and AI. It’s being designed with filmmakers’ blessings and educated on licensed data, which theoretically means studios can steer clear of the ethical dilemmas and copyright disputes that have been a thorn in the side of the AI industry.

As a movie critic, I firmly believe that when crafting these creative tools, it’s crucial we prioritize the filmmaker and artist as our primary focus. Instead of striving to mechanize their roles, we should work hand in hand with them to enhance their storytelling abilities, ensuring we’re not replacing human creativity but rather complementing it.

1) Moonvalley has managed to secure more than $100 million from backers like Khosla Ventures and Bessemer Venture Partners. Meanwhile, Asteria is employing Marey in the creation of a fresh documentary on Carl Sagan. Furthermore, Talukdar mentions that Marey is currently being tried out in numerous test runs at around a dozen prominent production studios, as well as by leading advertising firms.

In simpler terms, many current AI video models function as opaque systems. You input a command, and they create an entire scene without much control over specific details. Altering one aspect can cause other elements to change unexpectedly, which makes it challenging to manage all aspects of what’s being recorded.

Moonvalley strives to develop tools that seamlessly blend with the movie-making process, similar to how computer-generated imagery (CGI) and special effects software were incorporated in the past. Marey enables filmmakers to input storyboards or individual frames, and then modify them at their discretion. This could potentially grant filmmakers an unprecedented level of control over various aspects, such as objects, characters, motion, and overall scene arrangement.

As a cinephile jotting down my thoughts, I find myself drawn to the innovative process at hand. It’s like crafting a movie scene piece by piece, starting with a rough idea and gradually refining it into the vision you hold in your mind. This method isn’t far from the usual VFX workflow we know today. For small-scale studios lacking expansive resources, this approach offers an extraordinary opportunity to design and polish scenes with remarkable precision, even within limited spaces.

Talukdar guided me through a demonstration of Marey, initially playing real-life video of an actress in a studio, where she turned her head and discreetly drew a gun from under her scarf. Following this, he processed that video using the model to generate a different AI character on a train, mimicking the original actress’s movements. Subsequently, he altered the camera angle, showing scenery outside the train window, like mountains. Each AI-produced scene costs creators around $1 to $2 to render, which is similar to other AI video generators and significantly cheaper than re-shooting physical footage.

The model is trained exclusively on licensed footage provided by intellectual property owners. Approximately 80% of this footage comes from independent filmmakers and agencies who have accumulated B-roll over time. This training method results in the model having access to only one-fifth the amount of data as its competitors such as Google’s Veo 3, but Talukdar asserts that Moonvalley is making up for this shortfall with advanced technology developed by alumni from Deepmind, Meta, and other leading research facilities.

He states that while gathering extensive data would undeniably boost our model’s strength, it’s not essential to be the top model. Instead, aiming to be among the elite should suffice. Moreover, he emphasizes that this is the initial fully-licensed generative model available without sacrificing quality.

In Hollywood, numerous filmmakers perceive artificial intelligence (AI) as conflicting with their creative workflow. This conflict was a significant factor during the 2023 Hollywood strikes, as many protesters voiced concerns about job displacement due to automation. However, Talukdar posits that AI tools could instead generate new employment opportunities and allow studios to stretch their budgets rather than cutting them.

He suggests that instead of investing $50 million in a movie, it can now be made for only $5 million, which has some truth to it. However, what the studios are actually focusing on is this: they will still spend $50 million but with the same team of 100 people, they’ll be able to produce content that previously would have cost them $100 million. In other words, the same number of people will create more and higher-quality content.

Supporters of Marey within the film world include Ángel Manuel Soto, director of movies such as Blue Beetle, among others. In an email to TIME, he expressed his views, saying, “It seems to me that Moonvalley and Asteria have taken notice of artists’ concerns about ethical AI, and what they’ve developed with Marey is groundbreaking. From simplifying studio processes to giving a boost to up-and-coming creators in places like Puerto Rico and Dakar, Marey is the first generative AI that truly understands our needs: a means to work efficiently, act ethically, do more with less, and yet preserve the human element of this industry.

While numerous filmmakers express doubt about this reasoning, they worry it could lead to a deceptive switch. As Raphael Bob-Waksberg, creator of BoJack Horseman, explained to Brookings last year, “The larger uses of these technologies don’t seem to aim at empowering artists to create more interesting content for the same cost. Instead, they want to reduce costs, eliminate artists, pay less, and utilize these technologies in a manner that doesn’t enhance the work.

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2025-07-08 17:06

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