Google and A24 Strike a $75 Million Deal to Explore AI’s Place in Filmmaking
Google has signed a $75 million research partnership with A24, the independent film studio behind “Everything Everywhere All at Once” and “Moonlight,” to explore how artificial intelligence can be used in the making of movies and television, according to people familiar with the agreement.
The deal, announced Wednesday, gives A24 access to Google’s most advanced AI tools—including its video-generation models and research teams—while giving Google a foothold in one of the industries most anxious about the technology. People familiar with the terms said the work will focus on production, post-production and creative development, with an emphasis on what the two companies describe as AI-assisted creation rather than AI replacing writers or directors.
The partnership is structured as research rather than a content deal. A24’s filmmakers will experiment with AI for tasks such as pre-visualization, storyboarding, visual effects and editing, and Google’s researchers will study how the tools perform in real production settings. The companies said the goal is to understand where AI helps and where it hurts, and to publish what they learn.
For Hollywood, the deal is a signal. A24 is not a technology company, but it is one of the most influential forces in independent film, known for giving directors unusual creative freedom. Its decision to partner with Google suggests that the studios’ hard line against AI—a defining issue of the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes—may be softening at the edges, even as the unions that represent writers and actors remain publicly opposed.
The strikes made AI the central fault line in the industry’s relationship with Silicon Valley. Studios sought broad rights to use AI in production; unions demanded protections for human labor and creative credit. The contracts that ended the strikes included safeguards, but the underlying question—what role AI will play in an industry built on human creativity—was never resolved. Deals like the one with A24 operate in that unsettled space.
Google’s motives are commercial. The company has spent heavily on AI models that generate video and images, and it needs customers and use cases beyond marketing demos. Film production is among the most demanding tests of the technology, and a partnership with a respected studio gives Google credibility it cannot buy with advertising. It also positions Google against rivals: OpenAI, Meta and others are all pushing video-generation tools, and studios are among the most valuable clients.
A24’s calculus is different. The studio has built its brand on distinctive, director-driven films, and its executives have said privately that ignoring AI entirely would leave the company unprepared for whatever comes next. By partnering with Google, A24 gets early access to tools, research support and a say in how the technology develops, without committing to any particular production or workflow.
The history of such collaborations is cautionary. Studios and technology companies have tried for a decade to find common ground: IBM’s Watson was enlisted to cut a trailer for a Fox thriller in 2016, an experiment widely judged a failure, and every major studio has quietly experimented with machine learning for marketing and distribution. What has changed is the capability of the tools. Video-generation models can now produce footage that is difficult to distinguish from filmed material, and the question of who owns the output—and the credit—has become unavoidable.
The deal also gives Google a position in the copyright debate that surrounds generative AI. Studios have sued AI companies over the use of their content in training data, and the industry’s largest players remain in litigation with model makers. A research partnership with A24 does not resolve those fights, but it gives Google an example of collaboration to point to, and it gives A24 bargaining power it would not otherwise have in future negotiations over how its work is used.
The deal is small by the standards of either industry. Google spends more than $75 billion a year on research and development, and A24’s annual production budget is a fraction of a major studio’s. But the sum is large enough to fund a serious research program, and people familiar with the matter said the two companies expect the work to expand beyond the initial scope.
The tools themselves are the other half of the story. Google’s video-generation model competes with offerings from OpenAI and others, and the company has been looking for high-profile creative partners to demonstrate what its technology can do. Film production is the hardest possible test—real schedules, real budgets, real aesthetics—and Google’s researchers will learn more from a dozen A24 productions than from a thousand internal demos, people familiar with the company’s thinking said.
Reaction in Hollywood has been mixed. Some filmmakers see the partnership as a pragmatic hedge; others see it as legitimizing a technology they believe threatens their livelihoods. The unions that represent writers and actors said they will watch the program closely, and the terms of the deal require that A24 productions using Google’s tools remain within the guardrails set by the industry’s collective agreements.
Analysts said the real significance of the deal is the model it establishes: a major technology company and a respected creative institution collaborating on research, rather than technology being imposed on the industry from outside. If the partnership produces tools that filmmakers actually want to use, it could change the terms of the AI debate in Hollywood.
For now, the work is exploratory. The first projects are expected to begin later this year, and neither company has said which films or shows might be involved. The wall between Hollywood and Silicon Valley, built over a decade of failed partnerships and bitter strikes, has been opened—$75 million at a time.
