Warner Bros. to Implement AI Film Management System

LOS ANGELES, CA - MAY 02: People picket outside of FOX Studios on the first day of the Hol
David McNew/Getty Images
Paul Bois

Warner Bros. has put the peddle to the metal in the Hollywood artificial intelligence race by signing a deal to implement an AI-driven project management system.

The Warner Bros. movie division signed the deal with the company Cinelytic and will reportedly “leverage the system’s comprehensive data and predictive analytics to guide decision-making at the greenlight stage,” according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR).

The platform reportedly “can assess the value of a star in any territory and how much a film is expected to make in theaters and on other ancillary streams.”

Founded four years ago by Tobias Queisser, Cinelytic has been building and beta testing the platform for three years. In 2018, the company raised $2.25 million from T&B Media Global and signed deals with Ingenious Media (Wind River) and Productivity Media (The Little Hours). STX, which endured a number of flops in 2019, including Playmobil and Uglydolls, became a Cinelytic client in September.

While the platform won’t necessarily predict what will be the next $1 billion surprise, like Warners’ hit Joker, it will reduce the amount of time executives spend on low-value, repetitive tasks and instead give them better dollar-figure parameters for packaging, marketing and distribution decisions, including release dates.

The AI system could also function as a risk-management strategy by helping the studio avoid spending big money on projects that would perform poorly with audiences.

Queisser told THR the system can “calculate in seconds what used to take days to assess by a human when it comes to general film package evaluation or a star’s worth.”

Writer Ilana Pena on the picket line on the fourth day of the strike by the Writers Guild of America in front of Netflix in Hollywood, California, on May 5, 2023.  The Hollywood writers’ strike broke out over pay but the refusal of studios like Netflix and Disney to rule out artificial intelligence replacing human scribes in the future has only fueled anger and fear on the picket lines. (FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty)

“Artificial intelligence sounds scary. But right now, an AI cannot make any creative decisions,” the company said. “What it is good at is crunching numbers and breaking down huge data sets and showing patterns that would not be visible to humans. But for creative decision-making, you still need experience and gut instinct.”

As Breitbart News reported, Disney engendered backlash among industry insiders this week upon revelations that the studio employed AI to create the opening credits for its new Disney+ Marvel series Secret Invasion.

The backlash hit on Wednesday after video of the show’s intro went viral on social media, generating conversations about the future of artists in the industry that has since come to a standstill due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike, AI being chief among their concerns. Take a look:

Speaking with Polygon, the show’s executive producer, Ali Selim, said that they worked with Method Studios to create the AI sequence, which became a back-and-forth collaboration.

“We would talk to them about ideas and themes and words, and then the computer would go off and do something. And then we could change it a little bit by using words, and it would change.” Selim said, calling the opening intro “explorative and inevitable, and exciting, and different.”

Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed on Tubi, Google Play, YouTube Movies, or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms. 

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