Runway CEO says AI could help Hollywood make 50 films instead of one $100M blockbuster

Runway CEO says AI could help Hollywood make 50 films instead of one $100M blockbuster | TechCrunch

Cristóbal Valenzuela, the co-founder and CEO of AI video-generation startup Runway, now valued at north of $5 billion, may not be winning over more hearts and minds in the anti-AI, creative crowd with his recent comments about AI's potential in Hollywood. At Semafor's World Economy Summit this week, the AI executive suggested that studios should take the $100 million they spend on a single film and put it toward 50 films, in order to increase their output and their chances of getting a hit. "If you're spending a hundred million dollars on making one feature film, which is 90 minutes, imagine taking a hundred million dollars and spending it on, like, 50 movies, Valenzuela said. "Same quality. Same amount of output, visually. But you make way more content. So you have way better chances of hitting something. It's a quantity problem." That bumps up against the notion that a film represents a studio's investment in a piece of art, and that the movie business is one where studios win if they back the right creative team. With AI, Valenzuela is suggesting the whole industry can be boiled down to a numbers game -- and if you produce enough content, you'll eventually succeed. In his interview, the founder acknowledged there has been controversy about bringing AI into a creative market like film and TV production, but stated that "things are changing fast." He said he believes much of the early skepticism around AI came more from a place of fear and misunderstanding, but now most people understand what these powerful AI tools can do. The company has been developing its AI world models to help the creative class do "more work better and faster," he said. Runway works with a large number of studios and creators, and the technology is already helping to bring production costs down, the founder claimed. This is already happening. Take, for example, the soon-to-arrive $70 million "Bitcoin: Killing Satoshi" movie, which will be the first studio-quality AI feature film on the market. Its use of AI brought down production costs from an estimated $300 million, TheWrap reported. Amazon has also turned to AI to cut production costs for film and TV, as have studios in India. Sony Pictures said it's planning to use the technology. Even James Cameron has come out in support of AI as a way to keep blockbuster movies in production without layoffs. Asked which side of the business is seeing costs decline because of AI, Valenzuela said, "It's everywhere. It's in the pre-production side, it's in scripting, it's in planning, it's in execution, visual effects -- this is already beginning to be deployed at scale." AI may make it easier to produce more content. But critics dispute the tech industry's belief that scaling creativity with AI will automatically result in more great art. But Runway believes this to be true. "There's a crisis of creativity in the industry because of the economic incentives of how the content is made," Valenzuela said. He compared the production of video to something like books, where now, he said, there are some 25 million books produced yearly -- more than anyone could read. "Of course, I don't read 25 million books...but the world is in a much better place because there's more people who manage to tell a story or say something [to] the world," he said. (For what it's worth, Valenzuela's figure appears to be wrong. Data from UNESCO (the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) indicates that 2.2 million new titles are published every year. But he could be counting self-published ebooks and things like Wattpad stories, many of which are now also produced with AI, and are often left out of traditional estimates.) In any event, the idea is to flood the market with content, even if only some will become hits. That's what he hopes the movie industry will now do, thanks to AI. "We have this internal saying at Runway that the best movies are yet to be made because we haven't heard from probably, like, the billions of people who haven't had access to this...technology," Valenzuela said.

Runway CEO Wants More Movies Made to Increase the Chances of Success

Runway is an AI video production startup. And we know it adds value to the creative business, but to say that making more content is the solution to making money at the box office is somewhat dubious If AI had its way, it would make 50 movies for the price of one. And movie makers would have a better chance of scoring a bulls eye at the box office. No, we aren't making this up. This is how Cristobal Valenzuela perceives movie making of the future. Never heard of him? Well, he is the guy that believes that all our movie makers should use AI video generation applications to make fifty movies for the price of one so that their chances of hitting the bulls eye in terms of box office revenues goes up. Valenzuela was a guest at the Semafor World Economy event this week and seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons by suggesting that studios should take the $100 million they spend on a movie and develop 50 films instead so that they increase their output. Of course, nobody asked him why he assumed there'd be an audience for 50 films? Well, you cannot expect him to understand the subtle nuances of movie making and the works for all-time greats of cinema. For, he happens to be the co-founder and CEO of an AI video-generation startup called Runway that is now valued at $5 billion. Once an idea has the backing from a few moneybags, it needs no further validation... Right? At a time when the entire business fraternity is battling to find the right use-cases for artificial intelligence (AI) through agentic solutions and what not, this here idea of making more movies automatically seems beyond the realm of even science fiction. Not because, technology cannot make it happen. Because cinema is not a media where quality can beat quantity. "If you're spending a hundred million dollars on making one feature film, which is 90 minutes, imagine taking a hundred million dollars and spending it on, like, 50 movies. Same quality. Same amount of output, visually. But you make way more content. So you have way better chances of hitting something. It's a quantity problem," Valenzuela told the conference. Is he suggesting that AI can be used indiscriminately to create content by the truckloads in the hope that something will work? If so, he needs to meet the folks at Google who are penalising websites who used AI generated content. Just so that readers know what Runway has been doing in recent times, the company has developed AI world models to help the creative teams do "more work better and faster". The company already has several studios and creators as customers who are clued in on the fact that this technology does reduce costs. Barely two months ago, Runway raised $315 million Series E round on a $5.3 billion valuation with the idea of pre-training the next generation of world models, which are AI systems that construct internal representations of an environment so that they can plan for future events. One could think of it as visualising the future before actually making it. The idea itself is smart and could push the limits of the current LLMs, but it is too early for Valanzuela to talk about possibilities of reimagining a century-old movie business. Afterall, his company's first world model was launched only four months ago. That it beat Google and OpenAI in key benchmarks is one thing, but to make an overarching statement like this seems untimely. And for more reasons than the fact that despite historically having customer connects in the media, entertainment, and advertising business, the Runway itself had announced its intention to use its first world model across other fields like medicine, climate tech, energy, and robotics. Not only did Valenzuela enter the creative nest, he went about disturbing its peace by suggesting that those who were sceptic of AI's power were actually afraid of it. Sounding condescending in a creative space is the worst one can do if the purpose is to get new customers. While everyone acknowledges the fact that use of AI can reduce production costs as several production companies such as Amazon have done through its studios in India. The same is true with Sony Pictures and many others. In fact, even ace director James Cameron has supported AI as a means to make bigger blockbusters without cutting down on staff. It is not that Runway's solutions have no value in movie-making. For example, their GWM-Worlds app creates interactive projects where users can generate the world one visualises through a few prompts and images references. Since the model works through an understanding of geometry, physics and lighting, it can be come in handy for multiple use-cases, including games. Runway also builds realistic avatars through GWM-Avatars that simulates human behaviour, somewhat similar to what Google has worked on in the past and other companies like New Zealand-based Soul Machines are working on. In the future, there could be absolute synergy between the what Valenzuela is creating and the world of robotics and avatars. Additionally, the company would also enable native audio and long-form multi-shot generation on its AI model that could generate one-minute videos with character consistency, native dialogue, background audio and complex multi-angle shots. Of course, Runway isn't the only one playing around with creating stunning videos. There is Kling which recently launched its video suite capable of "simultaneous audio-visual generation," that can potentially transform the traditional workflow of AI video production model of silent visuals followed by manual dubbing. The product is owned by Hong Kong-based Kuaishou Technology. Both Kling and Runway are harbingers of a new age of production-ready tools that can make movie-making simpler. When Valenzuela made that bombastic statement, the audience wanted to know which side of movie-making had witnessed cost declines due to AI. The Runway co-founder went a step further and claimed that costs were done everywhere, from pre-production to scripting, planning, execution, visual effects etc. What he missed here is that movies have to appeal to the emotional side of the person paying the ticket price or watching it on a streaming platform. And if there is one thing that AI cannot understand (at least not till date) is the emotional quotient. However, Valenzuela thinks the movie business is already undergoing a crisis of creativity. His example was as facetious as his idea of movie-making. There are 25 million books being written yearly, which is more than anyone can read. But the world becomes a better place because more people manage to tell a story or say something to the world. What he fails to mention is that authors write books with passion and their desire to tell the world something of their idea cannot be done by any AI engine. At best it can simplify the process and use its mastery over language to reduce the effort of quality checks. Valenzuela things the best movies or books haven't been written because those minds do not have access to technology. By that logic, the best dishes too may not have been made till date because we did not have ChatGPT to generate recipes for us! Wake up Mr. Valenzuela... technology is an assistant not the soul of humanity. And cinema represents that soul to the rest of the world. So, making 50 movies instead of one just isn't the answer. Not convinced? Ask Google.