Google is investing about $75 million in indie studio A24

Google is buying a piece of independent film studio A24, joining forces with the company behind recent box-office winners “Backrooms” and “Marty Supreme” to work on artificial intelligence for the movie business.

People familiar with the deal told WSJ that Google is spending around $75 million on A24. The Alphabet unit already has a huge presence in online video through YouTube, but this is the first time it has taken an ownership stake in a film studio.

Under the agreement, Google’s DeepMind AI team and A24 will work together to build new tools for making and distributing movies.

The pairing is a surprising one. Studios and AI firms have kept a cautious distance from one another ever since software arrived that could spit out audio, pictures, and video.

Film companies have taken AI developers to court and fired off warning letters over claimed copyright theft, while many directors have called the technology a threat to real creative work.

Last year, Disney teamed up with OpenAI, but that arrangement fell apart in March when OpenAI pulled the plug on its Sora video tool.

Netflix recently bought an AI startup, founded by Ben Affleck, that can fix scenes without sending crews back to reshoot. Outside of moves like these, though, most of Hollywood has stayed on the sidelines when it comes to AI. As reported by Cryptopolitan previously, the streaming giant has also floated the idea of AI-generated films on the platform.

No access to A24’s film Library, and no cost-cutting pitch

Scott Belsky, an A24 partner in charge of the studio’s technology and innovation efforts, said the reason is simple. Developers, he said, have sold AI mainly as a way to cut costs and speed things up, which holds little appeal for filmmakers.

“We think there are better uses that preserve creative control and support risk-taking,” Belsky said. The tools they plan to build, he added, “won’t look anything like the prompted generation type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with.”

The deal runs for several years and is not exclusive. Importantly, it does not hand Google any access to A24’s own data, including its library of films and television shows.

Both sides hope to bring A24’s artists into the work. The studio collaborates with some of the biggest names in the business, including actor Timothée Chalamet and “Backrooms” director Kane Parsons.

“We believe breakthroughs happen when you get technology into the hands of the best minds in the field,” said Eli Collins, a vice president of product at DeepMind.

A24 and DeepMind had been talking even before Belsky came over from Adobe last year. His group, a 20-person unit called A24 Labs, is already building an application that uses AI to make storyboards, the rough sketches of a film that help spot trouble before shooting starts.

The studio last raised money in 2024, when Thrive Capital led a round that valued A24 at $3.5 billion. The people familiar with the matter said Google’s check is about the same size as what Thrive contributed back then.

Backroom’s director pushes back

Kane Parsons, who is the director of A24’s recent success “Backrooms,” recently shared his own blunt views on AI in an interview with The Australian. He said he stands “in the same boat as most well-adjusted people” and does not want the technology taking over Hollywood.

“If I could snap my fingers and make generative AI disappear forever, I probably would,” Parsons said. “Creatively, I get no enjoyment from using those tools. It defeats the purpose entirely for me.” He allowed that AI might one day ease some visual-effects work, but said it is hard to talk about calmly right now “because there’s so much at stake and so many genuinely harmful consequences already happening.”

Even so, Parsons said he wants to dig into AI as a subject in a future film. “What interests me more is interrogating it artistically,” he said, pointing to billboards and signs that are clearly AI-made. To him, he added, “generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot.”

The push toward video fits China’s pattern

Data shared by Zhongwen Online at an institutional meeting shows that AI short videos and video generation now top all token-consumption categories in China at 55%. E-commerce and marketing, such as livestream selling and advertising, come next at 24%.

Software development, once expected to lead because of the buzz around Vibe Coding, sits at just 15%, even with stronger coding in products like Claude. By that count, video burns more than twice the tokens of software work, making it the single largest use in the token economy.