In September 2024, Lionsgate signed a first-of-its-kind partnership between a Hollywood studio and a generative AI vendor, Runway. Runway is training a custom model on the Lionsgate catalogue of more than 20,000 titles, including John Wick and The Hunger Games. Michael Burns, vice chairman of Lionsgate, promises savings of “millions and millions of dollars” on storyboarding, previs and parts of VFX. In November 2024, Lionsgate confirmed that filmmakers were already using the model.
A year later, European competition started down the same road. BBC Studios launched an AI Creative Lab in 2025 across genres from scripted to kids & family, and began recruiting specialists to experiment with generative models.
Runway, Veo and Sora in 2026
OpenAI’s Sora has been shut down (the website and app were discontinued on 26 April 2026), but competitors are raising the bar. Runway Gen 4.5, released on 1 December 2025, topped the independent Video Arena leaderboard ahead of Google and OpenAI. Google’s Veo 3.1, released on 13 January 2026, is the first model to offer 4K output with native synchronised audio.
The models are moving into production. What used to take weeks of rendering, a studio now gets in hours. Storyboarding that took days is cut to minutes by AI.
Impact on jobs
According to a study by the Animation Guild and the Concept Art Association (Critical Crossroads, 2024), 75% of film companies that deployed AI tools reduced the number of roles, consolidated teams or eliminated positions. In 2025, the Globe and Mail described Canada’s animation and VFX sector as being in crisis, with announced cuts at DNEG, Cinesite, Framestore Vancouver and Walt Disney Animation Studios Vancouver.
The division of labour in Hollywood is changing. Studios hand concepts to models and get VFX renders in hours instead of weeks.
Disney and ILM build their own AI
Alongside external partnerships, Disney maintains its own AI team. Industrial Light & Magic published the short film Star Wars Field Guide in May 2025, the first public showcase of ILM’s own generative neural rendering pipeline. The project was led by Landis Fields as an experiment with a text-to-video model for fictional creatures on a new planet in the Star Wars universe. Rob Bredow, ILM’s vice president, presented test footage at TED 2025. On 11 December 2025, Disney announced a three-year licensing agreement with OpenAI and a Disney investment in OpenAI of $1 billion. The agreement covers more than 200 characters from the Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm catalogue, including Mickey Mouse, Iron Man and Darth Vader, for generating short user videos on the Sora platform.
Adobe and the unions
Adobe unveiled Firefly at MAX 2025 in October as an all-in-one creative AI studio with its own web-based video editor. In December 2025 it entered a partnership with Runway to integrate generative video.
Hollywood’s unions already have AI in their collective agreements. SAG-AFTRA, in its TV/Theatrical Agreement from December 2023, introduced rules for digital replicas and synthetic performers, and ratification passed with 78% of members. The IATSE Basic Agreement from 2024 passed with 85.9% and requires consent for AI scanning of crew, and bans forced prompt input that would replace another crew member.
What AI will not change in Hollywood
AI in the production layer makes filming itself cheaper. But the viewer’s attention is decided by creator slates on YouTube and in the Beast Industries portfolio. A studio without its own IP, without a model trained on its own catalogue and without a direct relationship with its audience ends up in that equation behind the platform and the top creator.
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