Lionsgate Signs Deal With AI Company To Help Creators ‘Augment Their Work’

Lionsgate Studio has signed a partnership with the artificial intelligence (AI) company Runway, marking a historic deal in the entertainment industry.

The agreement involves Runway using a generative AI model on all previous Lionsgate content, including popular titles such as “John Wick” and “The Hunger Games.” It will then use that knowledge to help generate future projects, according to The Hollywood Reporter. 

While exactly how this will happen wasn’t immediately revealed, the company described the concept by saying the AI would be “customized to Lionsgate’s proprietary portfolio of film and television content” and will aim to “help Lionsgate Studios, its filmmakers, directors and other creative talent augment their work.”

“Runway is a visionary, best-in-class partner who will help us utilize AI to develop cutting-edge, capital-efficient content creation opportunities,” Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns said of the new partnership. 

Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!

“Several of our filmmakers are already excited about its potential applications to their preproduction and postproduction process. We view AI as a great tool for augmenting, enhancing and supplementing our current operations,” he continued.

Runway also stressed the collaborative nature of the deal, using the word “augment” rather than selling itself as a replacement for creative work. 

“We’re committed to giving artists, creators and studios the best and most powerful tools to augment their workflows and enable new ways of bringing their stories to life,” Runway co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said in a statement, the outlet noted. 

“The history of art is the history of technology and these new models are part of our continuous efforts to build transformative mediums for artistic and creative expression. The best stories are yet to be told. Lionsgate has an incredible creative team and a clear vision for how AI can help their work — we’re excited to help bring their ideas to life.”

The studio recently came under fire after using AI-generated and incorrect quotes in the trailer for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.” 

“Lionsgate is immediately recalling our trailer for ‘Megalopolis,’” a Lionsgate spokesperson said in a statement last month, as The Daily Wire previously reported. “We offer our sincere apologies to the critics involved and to Francis Ford Coppola and American Zoetrope for this inexcusable error in our vetting process. We screwed up. We are sorry.”

The use of AI has been a hot topic in the entertainment industry and was part of the reason for the writers’ strike in 2023. A three-year agreement approved by the WGA union included a specific clause saying that “AI can’t write or rewrite literary material.”

Earlier this year, filmmaker Tyler Perry paused a planned $800 million studio expansion after seeing an OpenAI Sora Demo. 

“Being told that it can do all of these things is one thing, but actually seeing the capabilities, it was mind-blowing,” Perry said at the time.“There’s got to be some sort of regulations in order to protect us. If not, I just don’t see how we survive.”