John Wick Studio’s AI Anime Movie Dreams Shattered After 1 Year of Inking Groundbreaking Deal

Lionsgate claimed it could produce an anime movie based on its properties in three hours with AI in 2024. One year later, the substantial investment in AI has yet to pay off for the struggling studio behind John Wick.

In early June, Lionsgate’s costly partnership with Runway, an AI prompt-generative startup that was making headlines (and copyright lawsuits) with its tech, was highlighted in a report about Hollywood’s secret love affair with AI. Lionsgate’s vice chairman, Michael Burns, said AI would revolutionize the company’s filmmaking by digitally altering its films to fit a specific demographic or genre with less time and for less money. “Now we can say, ‘Do it in anime, make it PG-13.’ Three hours later, I’ll have the movie,” he infamously said. However, one year since Lionsgate inked its deal with Runway, the struggling film studio has yet to yield any results.

According to The Wrap, Lionsgate has faced numerous complications in its effort to produce an AI-generated film since inking its deal with Runway last September. While Burns believed he could shoot out an anime movie in mere hours based on Lionsgate’s massive library of films, the reality is anything but. Lionsgate’s filmography isn’t enough to adequately train an AI program like Runway to produce a large-scale project that the studio is demanding, according to those close to the situation.

However, this isn’t an issue with Lionsgate but rather a harsh truth about the limitations of AI for filmmaking and creative pursuits. As explained in the report, “The Lionsgate catalog is too small to create a model. In fact, the Disney catalog is too small to create a model.”

Furthermore, another issue with AI isn’t just that it demands an astronomical amount of content to produce arguable results, but that multiple AI programs are needed to compensate for their individual flaws. Google’s AI model, Veo 3, still struggles with rendering human physics, despite having access to YouTube’s 20-year archive of video content for the purpose of producing eight-second clips.

Even though Lionsgate states it’s using AI tools developed by other companies, in addition to Runway’s, those companies wouldn’t have access to Lionsgate’s film catalog that Runway has, thanks to the 2024 deal. Lionsgate’s struggles to master AI for cheap filmmaking come as other Hollywood studios, such as Disney and Universal, are challenging AI studios like Midjourney over blatant infringement of their copyrighted characters.

If these legal challenges escalate, Lionsgate’s costly venture into AI will be hindered even further, while the company currently has nothing to show for its financial loss. This also doesn’t account for the uphill battle Lionsgate would face in gaining legal consent from its stars, such as John Wick actor Keanu Reeves, for the use of AI training.

Still, despite its investment in Runway bearing no fruit after one year of labor, Lionsgate insists it remains committed to AI on “several fronts as planned.” Following Ballerina‘s poor box office performance in June and the current worldwide phenomenon of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle, someone at Lionsgate must be wishing they had a John Wick anime movie right about now.