We wholly understand that for many creatives, hearing that anything AI is encroaching on a studio or the creative process makes for a hard pass. That especially goes for anything involving A24, which is a company built on its taste and cultural cache. If anyone were to be the cool kids in thinking — or not thinking — about AI, you would think it might be them.
But A24 is in fact entering into a partnership with Google DeepMind that should help filmmakers develop new workflows and techniques involving, yes, AI. As the Wall Street Journal first reported, it represents a $75 million investment from Google, which is not a small foray into AI.
It’s important, however, to put into context what this partnership is and why it might be different — at least today — from the dalliances we’ve seen from other Hollywood studios.
The A24 and Google DeepMind partnership is being branded as a “research partnership.” A24 gets access to research, infrastructure, and other tech from DeepMind, and DeepMind gets advice and input from smart people at A24 about how to develop their tools. What A24 will have an active hand in is helping to shape new workflows for any AI tools that DeepMind builds.
As we’ve reported, this is the new frontier for companies chasing filmmakers, not necessarily developing even more sophisticated models, which on their own are geared more toward the masses and not toward the narrow use case of how filmmakers actually work. If A24 can have a hand in shaping what that looks like in the future for the people they work with and have early access to those tools, all the better for it. The deal hopes to answer the question: how might technology support filmmakers when they’re designed from the start to serve creative vision?
As IndieWire understands it, what this is not is an IP deal nor a data training deal involving A24 content. It also is not a production deal, and there’s no mandate on something being produced from it. Compare that to Lionsgate’s recent deal with Runway, which is building custom models trained on Lionsgate IP. Amazon and Netflix are also building their own workflow tools internally, though Amazon just recently announced a deal with OpenAI to use Amazon Web Services, leading to the studio to drop a nearly completed movie about OpenAI founder Sam Altman from director Luca Guadagnino.
You could make the case that Google wouldn’t be investing $75 million in A24 and not expect something to come of it beyond research, but then something like that is also a drop in the bucket for Google. In a statement, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis suggested that it’s a worthy investment if it helps them develop better tools.
“We believe the best way to develop tools that empower artists is to work directly with them,” Hassabis said. “By collaborating with filmmakers and industry leaders like A24 from the beginning, we can build new AI features to support artists in authentic, meaningful storytelling that helps enable their creative vision.”
Google’s video generation model Veo 3 back in May 2025 was at that point considered ahead of the curve compared to other models, capable of incorporating sound directly into the video generation. And its corresponding filmmaker-focused production tool, Flow, was also very creative-friendly, allowing directors to dictate specific camera movements and keep characters consistent across frames without the need to endlessly prompt and recreate certain images.
But this is the first time DeepMind has partnered directly with a studio or distributor, as previously the collaborations have been with individual filmmakers and their AI initiatives like Darren Aronofsky, so this is a big in-road into the creative world for the tech giant, even if a press release says this is just about research.
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