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
“They Need a Real CEO” - Daily Wire Raises $100m to Considers IPO “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

104


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.
00:00:00.000 Google invests in A24.
00:00:02.300 A24 is the one that you're starting to see in a lot of different places,
00:00:05.960 and they did back rooms, and back room was obviously incredibly successful.
00:00:10.060 So this story came out about Google wants to put $75 million into a film company.
00:00:14.660 Wait, what? Google?
00:00:15.920 Yeah, they're going into it.
00:00:17.280 You know what $75 million is to Google?
00:00:19.080 It's what $5 is to the average person, just so you know.
00:00:22.040 They spent that much on coffee filters this morning.
00:00:25.280 And by the way, as much as people think that's a joke, that's not a joke.
00:00:28.840 They literally, $75 million to them is what $5 is to the average person.
00:00:32.540 Maybe $50 is to the average person.
00:00:35.920 It's like, yeah, let me just try it out and see what happens.
00:00:37.840 So let me read this to you.
00:00:39.160 Google is investing in an independent A24.
00:00:41.980 As part of a new AI research partnership between the two companies,
00:00:45.500 the giant has given them $75 million into the recent hits Backrooms and Marty Supreme.
00:00:50.240 According to people familiar with the Matterdough Alphabet unit,
00:00:52.740 Google is a major player in online entertainment through YouTube.
00:00:55.260 The deal marks the first time it has taken a stake in a studio.
00:00:59.420 Google's DeepMind AI unit and A24 are aiming to create new tools for movie production and distribution.
00:01:05.620 Disney signed a partnership with OpenAI last year that abruptly ended with the tech company shut down its Sora video tool in March.
00:01:12.360 Netflix recently acquired AI startup founded by Ben Affleck that can tweak scenes without reshoots.
00:01:17.860 But by and large, mainstream Hollywood has done little with AI thus far.
00:01:22.120 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.
00:01:34.220 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.
00:01:47.080 Their multi-year, non-exclusive deal doesn't give Google access to A24 data, including its film and television library.
00:01:53.320 Elon, why is this so important?
00:01:54.400 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.
00:02:01.940 They're a company that makes really unique, high-quality, artistic films.
00:02:06.460 So bringing AI into that sector is really, really smart.
00:02:09.420 That's a good way to do it.
00:02:10.360 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.
00:02:15.160 This year was the first year where you're really starting to see the major integration of AI into film.
00:02:20.020 There's multiple studios that have dedicated, big studios that have dedicated exclusive AI projects.
00:02:25.680 There were two film festivals this year.
00:02:27.760 Sundance, I believe, and TIFF, I believe it might have been, had full AI films.
00:02:32.280 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.
00:02:41.200 And I think that AI is going to be heavily normalized in the next three years in AI.
00:02:46.680 We're going to start seeing a lot of projects that are almost made entirely in AI.
00:02:50.560 But even just as a supplemental tool, it has tremendous value.
00:02:54.120 Will it erase some jobs?
00:02:55.160 A hundred percent.
00:02:55.800 Obviously, we know that's coming.
00:02:57.080 But it does do an incredible job at certain things when it comes to filmmaking.
00:03:00.340 You have to look at the background of the people that are speaking when you're in Silicon Valley.
00:03:04.880 And Scott Belsky wrote a book.
00:03:07.300 It's actually on your shelf.
00:03:08.600 a bright yellow book called The Messy Middle, and he wrote that when he was at Adobe.
00:03:15.260 And at Adobe, he was working on building all kinds of tools for all kinds of uses.
00:03:20.300 That is the DNA structure of Scott, who is a partner at A24.
00:03:24.840 So when I hear that voice talking, and I know his preset mind on building tools and making
00:03:32.740 tools better, I believe that this is an investment.
00:03:36.760 Thrive Capital also made an investment in A24.
00:03:40.120 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.
00:03:45.860 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.
00:03:56.300 I dove into it because I said $75 million.
00:03:58.120 That won't even fund a small biopic about two freedom-loving entrepreneurs that create a search company.
00:04:05.240 You know, you can't make that movie for $75 million.
00:04:07.820 That movie was made.
00:04:08.900 It's called Intern, and it was a horrible movie.
00:04:11.260 I don't know if you saw that.
00:04:11.900 Exactly.
00:04:12.560 But you see my point?
00:04:14.040 So I'm like, this isn't about a movie.
00:04:15.520 This isn't about content.
00:04:16.780 And then I hear the voice of Scott Belsky, who is a tools guy and also founded Behance,
00:04:21.800 and I say to myself, guess what?
00:04:23.560 I think this is all about tools because I see the Google money
00:04:26.700 and I see the Thrive Capital money about a year ago.
00:04:29.620 Snyder.
00:04:30.200 Proof of concept.
00:04:31.420 They've proved the concept that this is not only doable,
00:04:34.100 It's also sellable.
00:04:35.340 And that's really what everybody's been waiting for.
00:04:36.780 So Google backing this is basically saying, okay, we've seen enough.
00:04:39.520 We see the future here.
00:04:40.460 We see potential.
00:04:41.600 So we're going to put a little bit of money in it and see where it can go.
00:04:43.860 Why wouldn't Hollywood embrace the technology?
00:04:46.840 Why wouldn't they?
00:04:48.320 But what's interesting is you said $75 million doesn't make you a movie.
00:04:51.460 What we are seeing with AI is that $7 million now makes you a movie that used to cost $100 million.
00:04:56.420 This also will inevitably down the road give a lot more power to independent filmmakers.
00:05:01.120 where you used to need a $300 million budget to make a good film,
00:05:05.480 you're now going to see really, really high-quality films
00:05:07.520 made from people in their homes as a group of people.
00:05:09.900 I have friends who are recording stuff on iPhones,
00:05:11.640 and AI can change the entire environment, change the costume,
00:05:15.440 do the lighting, do everything,
00:05:16.660 but they're still allowing creative input.
00:05:18.600 So as long as we don't lose that aspect
00:05:20.180 where we don't destroy creativity entirely,
00:05:23.060 I think people don't realize just how far you're going to be able to go with very little money.
00:05:25.960 It unlocks creativity in the same way that social media and YouTube
00:05:28.700 unlock creativity for news and for, you know, podcasts and things like that.
00:05:32.580 So that's what AI can potentially do.
00:05:34.000 And if you're a studio and it's so expensive maintaining a roster of
00:05:37.780 filmmakers who have high big names and big budget,
00:05:40.260 why wouldn't you say I'm going to use AI with somebody who's proven,
00:05:43.480 I'm going to get 10 people who have the potential to be creative,
00:05:46.800 load them up as much AI tech as I possibly can and see which one of them
00:05:50.240 comes up with some, some gold. Why wouldn't you do that?
00:05:52.720 That's what it's from a business standpoint. It only makes sense.
00:05:55.660 And from a content creation standpoint, creativity.
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