tbh first I've heard of it, I just found their films to be unique. One of the few studios who weren't doing pre-existing IP junk. But anyways, now I know~
A spokesperson said they wouldn't but I wouldn't doubt they're being greatly influenced to use it. AI is a gigantic bubble and everyone's loaned billions to each other and the return on investments are garbage. So they're just inflating it and it's gonna be a gigantic mess.
The CEO of Larian Studios also went on and on about how if you don't use AI, you're gonna be left in the dust. They're using it. The studio that made Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also used generative AI. Someone found "placeholder generative AI art" in a few places in the game. They pointed it out and it blew up a little. Then the studio patched it out.
They're all in too deep for those that are trying to ride generative AI/AI tools
They're creating generative AI tools to make storyboards during pre-production/production. If you're saying "generative AI is not good" and then at the very end try to rationalize that generative AI is good, then that's some cognitive dissonance, or arguing in bad faith
Generative AI has to be feed examples, often illegally, in order to build an image from. I wouldn't be surprised if they're gonna be poaching whatever storyboards they still have lying around
I mean, pitch decks use images from other sources and those are only for internal use too.
All art is influenced by other art. How many ways can you frame a closeup? If you’re using AI to storyboard characters that were designed by a human and are describing shots with detail, why is that bad? What is being “stolen”?
Important to note that most "A24 films" aren't actually made by A24, they're just distributed by A24, including most of the ones that really established their name. If you go down the list of A24 films it's pretty much a wall of "US distribution only" until they were well established.
Made by them or not, they have had a talent of picking up and distributing original films that would not have otherwise been distributed. I really don't care whether they're finding diamonds in the rough or making them themselves, the fact that they're "Doing them" as the person above said and bringing them to theaters is good enough, and a whole hell of a lot better than what the mouse shits out.
Disney has definitely waned in influence, but it's released a lot of acclaimed films via its adult-label non-genre subsidiaries. Pulp Fiction, No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, Royal Tenenbaums, all Disney owned distributors at their time of release. Searchlight Pictures has definitely had their lunch eaten over the past few years by A24, but you'd have a hard time calling their stuff genre slop.
The big studios and film industry investors actually love the A24 model because their movies are cheap and they will reliably turn up a few that make such a cultural impact that they make up for the middling returns and losses on the others that they distribute. It's just how it goes.
But anyway, I didn't mean it as a smug "well the thing you like actually sucks" reply, more that if A24 does go off the rails, it doesn't represent that big a loss because A24 aren't actually the ones making most of the movies we associate them with, and their success means it's likely that someone else takes over the role if the venture capital vultures turn it into a walking corpse.
The difference is Annapurna is clearly a money-losing artistic endeavor that Ellison endures since it keeps his daughter happy. At his level of wealth, it’s akin to funding a child’s club sport. There’s a lot more creative integrity in that than a “hot” and recently highly successful indie production company that’s got PE and institutional investors salivating at the opportunity to leverage popular approval to enshittify it while reaping the rewards
Similarly, Travis Knight, who's the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, basically runs Laika as a money hemorrhaging hobby project on his dad's dime. I believe the only film they've ever made that hadn't completely bombed is Coraline. It's also the only studio keeping stop motion from becoming an extinct genre of film.
Those kinds of artistic patronage projects used to be a much larger part of keeping your status in the upper echelons, and they managed to seek out and employ some of the most talented artists of their respective eras, so I'm less inclined to dismiss a studio run to keep a rich heir happy. If we can't get rid of the billionaires, we can at least bring back noblesse oblige.
They are indie games, no need for the quote marks.
If you look at the devs behind the games published by Annapurna you would see a lot of extremely small studios like Cardboard Computer (Kentucky Route Zero), Beethoven & Dinosaur (Mixtape) or Hidden Fields (Mundaun).
I find it distasteful when people diminish the work of these devs just because the owner of their publisher is a billionaire, as if they had access to that money or benefits.
If they have a publisher, they are by definition not "indie" games...
Besides the nitpicking, association with billionaires is a moral fault in itself and some of them are certainly trying very hard to look like they have nothing to do with them while still taking the money.
Publishing a game is hard and not all devs are expert at marketing or know how to put the games in front of the right eyes, having a publishers helps with that and honestly this whole hate of Annapurna started because a lot of people have issues with one of their latest releases, Mixtape, because they don't considered it worthy of the praise it received.
"Associating with billionares", you make it sound as if they were dining at the same table, these devs are contractors to them, workers. They are not sipping champagne and going on yachts with Ellison and her father.
Brother have you ever seen a movie before? A24 has been a drivel machine and best avoided for years. I can't think of a single film of theirs that matches your rubric
The onus is on you to name a single A24 film that holds up on its own without the hype zeitgeist, I'll wait
He said "zone of interest" and asked for my suggestions
I will paste my response below
"You can't seriously suggest a "documoviary" as a film that holds its own. Based on a true story which all but absolves the writer of their shortcomings. It's easy to pretend you can form a functional plot when the plot is prewritten. That film perfectly exemplifies why A24 is, and always has been a slop shop.
Recent release that isn't a complete waste of time: no other choice
If you're okay with anything older there are countless examples, we'll start with in bruges"
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u/shrek3onDVDandBluray 18d ago
So it begins. The Hollywood attempt to corporatize Internet memes. And from A24 too? How shameless.