Lionsgate Vice-Chairman Michael Burns Claims He Can Produce Anime Films In 3 Hours With AI

No one in Hollywood seemingly has stronger opinions about the future of artificial intelligence in animation production than senior citizens.

A new New York magazine article, entitled “Everyone Is Already Using AI (And Hiding It),” is worth a read, if only for the wild claims made by Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns, 66. Unlike the brash AI animation predictions made by another popular geriatric Hollywood player, Burns isn’t even making a prediction. He’s just outright asserting that he can do things with AI that no one has yet proven possible.

Burns, whose company Lionsgate inked a first-of-its-kind deal with AI company Runway last fall, told the magazine that a key benefit of AI is the ability to take any title from his studio’s library (including action franchises like John Wick, Twilight, and The Hunger Games); process the film through Runway AI software while adjusting its tone, format, and rating; and have an entirely new finished movie a few hours later.

To quote Burns directly:

Now we can say, ‘Do it in anime, make it PG-13.’ Three hours later, I’ll have the movie. … [I] can do that, and now I can resell it.”

Assuming Burns can actually do that, one has to wonder then why isn’t he doing it? Even if he regenerated a small portion of his studio’s 20,000-plus live-action title library into anime, it seems like he’s uncovered an infinite money glitch for Lionsgate.

The most likely reasons that Burns isn’t actually doing what he claims he can do is that 1) it’s not a simple three-hour process to produce an anime film, and 2) even if it were, audiences don’t want existing live-action content reprocessed in an “anime” style.

And therein lies the crux of artificial intelligence production. While AI is quickly becoming a film production tool with numerous applications, it is still just that — a tool — which has to be used in coordination with countless other tools and human talent to create anything watchable, much less meaningful.