Valuetainment - June 28, 2026


“This Isn’t About Movies” – Google’s A24 Deal And The Future Of AI Filmmaking Tools

Topics
Google's AI investment in A24 AI filmmaking tools
Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Scott Belsky Marty Supreme Ben Affleck Sora
＂No Longer Republican＂ – Tucker Carlson Breaks With the Republican Party “You Don’t Get Rewarded For Failure” – Uruguay’s Post‑World Cup Backlash

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

212.06

Word count

1,658

Sentence count

111


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Google is investing in an independent film company, A24, as part of a new AI research partnership between the two companies. This marks the first time Google has taken a stake in a studio, and I break down why I think this is a smart move.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00 Google invests in A24.
00:00:02 A24 is the one that you're starting to see in a lot of different places,
00:00:05 and they did back rooms, and back room was obviously incredibly successful.
00:00:10 So this story came out about Google wants to put $75 million into a film company.
00:00:14 Wait, what? Google?
00:00:15 Yeah, they're going into it.
00:00:17 You know what $75 million is to Google?
00:00:19 It's what $5 is to the average person, just so you know.
00:00:22 They spent that much on coffee filters this morning.
00:00:25 And by the way, as much as people think that's a joke, that's not a joke.
00:00:28 They literally, $75 million to them is what $5 is to the average person.
00:00:32 Maybe $50 is to the average person.
00:00:35 It's like, yeah, let me just try it out and see what happens.
00:00:37 So let me read this to you.
00:00:39 Google is investing in an independent A24.
00:00:41 As part of a new AI research partnership between the two companies,
00:00:45 the giant has given them $75 million into the recent hits Backrooms and Marty Supreme.
00:00:50 According to people familiar with the Matterdough Alphabet unit,
00:00:52 Google is a major player in online entertainment through YouTube.
00:00:55 The deal marks the first time it has taken a stake in a studio.
00:00:59 Google's DeepMind AI unit and A24 are aiming to create new tools for movie production and distribution.
00:01:05 Disney signed a partnership with OpenAI last year that abruptly ended with the tech company shut down its Sora video tool in March.
00:01:12 Netflix recently acquired AI startup founded by Ben Affleck that can tweak scenes without reshoots.
00:01:17 But by and large, mainstream Hollywood has done little with AI thus far.
00:01:22 Scott Belsky, an A24 partner who oversees his technology and innovation work, said this is because developers have pushed AI as a way to make movies faster and cheaper, which doesn't appeal to filmmakers.
00:01:34 We think there are better uses that preserve creative control and support risk-taking, and new tools won't look anything like the prompted generation type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with.
00:01:47 Their multi-year, non-exclusive deal doesn't give Google access to A24 data, including its film and television library.
00:01:53 Elon, why is this so important?
00:01:54 So, number one, I think it just really, it's a smart move from Google to go to A24 because A24 is very respected as filmmakers.
00:02:01 They're a company that makes really unique, high-quality, artistic films.
00:02:06 So bringing AI into that sector is really, really smart.
00:02:09 That's a good way to do it.
00:02:10 I also think we're starting to very, very quickly, you know, they're saying that AI is not a huge part of Hollywood yet.
00:02:15 This year was the first year where you're really starting to see the major integration of AI into film.
00:02:20 There's multiple studios that have dedicated, big studios that have dedicated exclusive AI projects.
00:02:25 There were two film festivals this year.
00:02:27 Sundance, I believe, and TIFF, I believe it might have been, had full AI films.
00:02:32 So Google going into this space to normalize the use of AI in film is a very smart move doing it through A24, in my opinion.
00:02:41 And I think that AI is going to be heavily normalized in the next three years in AI.
00:02:46 We're going to start seeing a lot of projects that are almost made entirely in AI.
00:02:50 But even just as a supplemental tool, it has tremendous value.
00:02:54 Will it erase some jobs?
00:02:55 A hundred percent.
00:02:55 Obviously, we know that's coming.
00:02:57 But it does do an incredible job at certain things when it comes to filmmaking.
00:03:00 You have to look at the background of the people that are speaking when you're in Silicon Valley.
00:03:04 And Scott Belsky wrote a book.
00:03:07 It's actually on your shelf.
00:03:08 a bright yellow book called The Messy Middle, and he wrote that when he was at Adobe.
00:03:15 And at Adobe, he was working on building all kinds of tools for all kinds of uses.
00:03:20 That is the DNA structure of Scott, who is a partner at A24.
00:03:24 So when I hear that voice talking, and I know his preset mind on building tools and making
00:03:32 tools better, I believe that this is an investment.
00:03:36 Thrive Capital also made an investment in A24.
00:03:40 So I believe what we are seeing here is what's going to come out of here is not a studio in what we think.
00:03:45 I think they are a studio, but I think you're going to see tools and you're going to see a lot of things coming out of it as opposed to what I first reaction was.
00:03:56 I dove into it because I said $75 million.
00:03:58 That won't even fund a small biopic about two freedom-loving entrepreneurs that create a search company.
00:04:05 You know, you can't make that movie for $75 million.
00:04:07 That movie was made.
00:04:08 It's called Intern, and it was a horrible movie.
00:04:11 I don't know if you saw that.
00:04:11 Exactly.
00:04:12 But you see my point?
00:04:14 So I'm like, this isn't about a movie.
00:04:15 This isn't about content.
00:04:16 And then I hear the voice of Scott Belsky, who is a tools guy and also founded Behance,
00:04:21 and I say to myself, guess what?
00:04:23 I think this is all about tools because I see the Google money
00:04:26 and I see the Thrive Capital money about a year ago.
00:04:29 Snyder.
00:04:30 Proof of concept.
00:04:31 They've proved the concept that this is not only doable,
00:04:34 It's also sellable.
00:04:35 And that's really what everybody's been waiting for.
00:04:36 So Google backing this is basically saying, okay, we've seen enough.
00:04:39 We see the future here.
00:04:40 We see potential.
00:04:41 So we're going to put a little bit of money in it and see where it can go.
00:04:43 Why wouldn't Hollywood embrace the technology?
00:04:46 Why wouldn't they?
00:04:48 But what's interesting is you said $75 million doesn't make you a movie.
00:04:51 What we are seeing with AI is that $7 million now makes you a movie that used to cost $100 million.
00:04:56 This also will inevitably down the road give a lot more power to independent filmmakers.
00:05:01 where you used to need a $300 million budget to make a good film,
00:05:05 you're now going to see really, really high-quality films
00:05:07 made from people in their homes as a group of people.
00:05:09 I have friends who are recording stuff on iPhones,
00:05:11 and AI can change the entire environment, change the costume,
00:05:15 do the lighting, do everything,
00:05:16 but they're still allowing creative input.
00:05:18 So as long as we don't lose that aspect
00:05:20 where we don't destroy creativity entirely,
00:05:23 I think people don't realize just how far you're going to be able to go with very little money.
00:05:25 It unlocks creativity in the same way that social media and YouTube
00:05:28 unlock creativity for news and for, you know, podcasts and things like that.
00:05:32 So that's what AI can potentially do.
00:05:34 And if you're a studio and it's so expensive maintaining a roster of
00:05:37 filmmakers who have high big names and big budget,
00:05:40 why wouldn't you say I'm going to use AI with somebody who's proven,
00:05:43 I'm going to get 10 people who have the potential to be creative,
00:05:46 load them up as much AI tech as I possibly can and see which one of them
00:05:50 comes up with some, some gold. Why wouldn't you do that?
00:05:52 That's what it's from a business standpoint. It only makes sense.
00:05:55 And from a content creation standpoint, creativity.
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