The Walt Disney Company is said to make a big spash in the Artificial Intelligence world, TheWrap reported on Thursday.
It’s all very hush-hush for now, and a source told the outlet that they are not even sure the company will announce anything. But it seems like Bob Iger and his team are close to committing to “a major AI initiative that will transform its creative output”. It apparently would involve hundreds of people and would be mostly focused on the post-production part of the pipeline. The parks and experiences division may also profit from it.
Details are scarce at this point, and the trade seemingly rushed to get it out while it was still reaching some ears at Wall Street. The timing of the leak is suspicious, as Disney is preparing to report its quarterly earnings of the Q4 2024 fiscal year. This is exactly the kind of splashy and attention-grabbing announcement that could be made during one of these calls — which often don’t focus as much on the creative side.
Last year, there was a six-month industry-wide stoppage due to two overlapping strikes by the writers and the actors. One of the main sticking points was setting some railways around the use of artificial intelligence in entertainment. But the part that this would affect the most is that of visual effects artists and other groups involved in the post-production process. They are grouped under IATSE, which negotiated a new deal earlier in 2024.
Despite that, AI has arrived in Hollywood and it’s here to stay. Lionsgate recently announced a deal with Runway, a company that will facilitate their pre- and post-production pipelines. Other studios are also using the new and evolving technology in other, quieter ways, but it’s only a matter of time before it’s all normalized, just like the usage of computer-generated effects was 20 years ago.
Details on the Disney deal will hopefully come out over the next few weeks, so we become slightly more aware of what’s going on behind the scenes in Hollywood. It’s also unclear how this will affect Star Wars, of course. The franchise, thanks to George Lucas’ vision, has always been at the forefront of the next wave of technological advances. After introudicing the Volume in the late 2010s, it felt like they were competitive in that arena again, but since then, AI has eclipsed it all.
Lucasfilm has also a very consistent way of working through post-production, as they have a team of concept artists working on everything they do. Post-production, though, is changing a little thanks to the use of the Volume. So it remains to be seen if it could be shaken up even further with artificial intelligence.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.