Warner Bros. is getting into the AI game. No, that doesn’t mean that Skynet is around the corner and WB is going to be the harbinger of a robot-filled hellscape where our only hope is Linda Hamilton’s unborn child. The studio is just going to use artificial intelligence so that it can make more money.
According to THR, WB is the latest company to sign a deal with Cinelytic (only a semi-scary, foreboding name) to utilize the latter’s AI system to help predict the box office outcome of prospective films. Why would WB want this information? Well, simply put, the studio is trying to eliminate the mundane, repetition that comes with trying to analyze how well a film will do based on factors such as actors, markets, and budget, instead leaving that to a computer.
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And before you read headlines and think that WB just signed a deal so that all of its greenlighting decisions are made by an AI-powered computer, that’s definitely not the case. Instead, Cinelytic will take the data provided by the company and spit out a report of how well that film might do, which will be a more informed prediction that can help studio heads better make their decisions.
The report uses a great example of when studios go to film festivals and are pitted against each other in bidding wars to snag the next great, potential awards contender. We see it every year where studios end up paying obscene amounts of money for a film that they just know is going to be the big Oscar contender that is going to break out and make $100 million at the box office. And every year, we see a majority of those films crash and burn. So, a tool like the AI provided by Cinelytic may be able to help lower that risk.
Long story short, technology is definitely infecting the studio decision-making at WB, as well as other film companies. This is just a fact of life. It’s interesting to see how it plays out, but we probably shouldn’t worry about AI-written scripts and whatnot just yet.
