In his first earnings conference call as CEO at the helm of Paramount and Warner Bros., David Ellison presented his merged Hollywood empire as a cutting-edge technology company — and part of that tightrope walk included an embrace of AI while also rejecting “AI slop.”
This is a two-step process that is not necessarily easy. The technology is widely seen as a harbinger of doom for traditional Hollywood workflows (i.e. building sets, filming with real background extras, traveling on location, etc.) while increasingly being adapted and integrated into the business (see: Ben Affleck’s VFX company, which has helped Netflix use AI on over 300 titles so far, while supposedly preserving this which makes Hollywood, Hollywood).
Ellison told analysts that he expects AI to help his company’s studios create content faster and more cheaply, describing the technology as the biggest advancement in the industry since CGI effects became common. Skydance plans to spend $30 billion a year on its content portfolio, which includes everything from HBO’s high-profile TV projects to CBS procedurals and MTV reality shows to NFL sports rights and features at Warners and Paramount.
“I don’t think you can ignore how quickly this technology is evolving,” Ellison said after setting the table, asserting that “in a world where artificial intelligence is poor, we think there will always be a premium for truly handcrafted storytelling.”
Ellison has a unique perspective on the issue as the heir to his father Larry Ellison’s AI-driven Oracle technology fortune, which is a key facet of his efforts to rebrand the former Hollywood studios as a technology-focused company. (At this point, Oracle Fusion’s enterprise cloud applications also received a call on the earnings call when it came to consolidating back-office functions.)
The CEO also sees franchise intellectual property — he described his empire as having 40 billion-dollar franchises — as a moat protecting against the onslaught of AI content, offering more premium experiences to his more than 203 million subscribers as part of a soon-to-be merged Paramount+ and HBO Max.
He then launched into an anecdote about a franchise that Skydance Media has rebooted several times over the past two decades.
“AI truly has the potential to be the greatest creative unlock in modern history,” Ellison said optimistically. “The last time we saw anything like this was really with the advent of CG and digital composites in the early 90s. This technology gave rise to amazing stories like Jurassic Park And Terminator 2. It’s hard to imagine that AI won’t have a bigger impact than this. Personally, I believe that this will be a fantastic lever for creativity.
“If you go back in time, talking about Terminator “What everyone knows is one of my favorites, if you go back to 1983, when James Cameron made this movie, it was made for $4 million,” Ellison noted. “If you wanted to make this movie today, shot by shot, it would be between $60 million and $70 million.”
The CEO added: “There aren’t many bets that are taken like this in our industry. And we think these tools will help unlock more original storytelling by being able to make budgets more digestible for taking so many risks.”
Cameron, who directed Arnold Schwarzenegger’s original feature as well as its acclaimed sequel, was one of the CEO’s biggest supporters (and an early advocate for “Team Ellison” as Skydance battled Netflix for its Warner Bros. prize). THE Avatar Helmer himself has been at the forefront of technology, with his Lightstorm banner just purchasing an AI-based 3D post-production company in September.
Skydance is also seeking to integrate an AI productivity narrative by seeking to find some $6 billion in cost synergies through the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. In addition to finding redundancies in the company’s overhead, real estate and facilities, as well as consolidating back office and corporate functions, these efficiencies include scaling AI workflows across the combined company. This includes the merger of Paramount+ and HBO Max within a year, which Ellison described as an “ambitious goal” that is “possible thanks to the latest artificial intelligence tools.”
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