Back roomsis the latest mega-hit horror film, a film full of ideas about repetition and degradation. Its central theme—the horror of a world that seems irrational, terrifyingly, taking away from our own—was seen in some circles as a critique of productive AI. This idea has clearly struck a chord. It recently surpassed $300 million at the global box office, Back rooms has become the biggest hit yet for its buzzy boutique producer and distributor, New York label A24.
After this box office coup, it’s ironic that A24 recently announced a $75 million research partnership with DeepMind, Google’s in-house artificial intelligence lab. As the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, the tech giant is partnering with A24 to create new “tools” for filmmaking as part of A24’s technology startup, A24 Labs, led by co-founder Scott Belsky.
“This is a research collaboration,” Sophia Shin, head of communications at A24, tells WIRED in an email. “We’re working closely with DeepMind researchers to learn, iterate, and build, having an active hand in shaping new tools and workflows.”
It’s the latest in a series of uneasy, controversial marriages between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Late last year, Disney announced it was taking a $1 billion stake in OpenAI, which includes licensed characters like Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and C-3PO from the company’s video production model, Sora. A few months later, Sora himself was kaput, as it were. The threat of AI to cinema, and the creative arts in general, can feel completely present: entry-level (and murderous) automation jobs, menacing writers’ rooms, and jumping into multiplexes to show AI-generated work that drives the game from boring to disgusting. Some studios have sued AI companies for copyright infringement.
There is also growing concern that AI’s take on the film business is having an interesting effect, as in the recent case of studios adapting Luca Guadagnino’s biopic of OpenAI founder Sam Altman, What is being done.
The announcement of the A24 AI partnership was particularly confusing, and controversial, because of A24’s place in modern film culture.
A24’s legion of diehards don’t seem to be taking the news of their latest collaboration very well. Earlier this week, A24 released the trailer for Jesse Eisenberg’s new musical drama The Debut. In X, the comments under the trailer were full of criticism that came from A24, from fans sending tombstones and announcing the death of the company, to promises to illegally swindle the film (eating A24’s profits), to cruel words like: “It’s great that Debut is a film that comes out of the middle. [sic] for a24 ends with ai.” (Your definition of “irony” may vary.)
“Our relationship with viewers is something we don’t take for granted,” A24’s Shin emphasized. “This relationship exists because we want to say what tools will be built for artists, so that they have a say in shaping them rather than being given tools. We prefer to have a seat at the table rather than being on the sidelines.”
Google DeepMind did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Cool Factor
A24 is a great tastemaker in the film industry. “In the same way that Disney sold nostalgia, A24 sold a sense of being very hip, and classy, from the past,” said film critic Esther Rosenfield.
Before Back roomsA24’s best American indie films are like Witch, Moonlight, Midsommar, Everything Everywhere At Once, and the latter Marty Supreme. The studio has presented, and supported, the work and careers of filmmakers such as Sofia Coppola, Denis Villeneuve, Ari Aster, Jane Schoenbrun, Celine Song, and the Safdie brothers. It has earned numerous Academy Award nominations since its inception in 2012. A distinctive A24 logo in front of a film trailer, a film-going culture otherwise dominated by boring IP blockbusters, is usually enough to build hype for a new release.
