Google Invests $75 Million in A24 and Partners with DeepMind on AI Filmmaking Tools

What the Deal Actually Is

Google has made a $75 million equity investment in A24 and announced a multiyear research partnership between the studio and Google DeepMind. The Wall Street Journal reported the investment amount first; A24 declined to confirm the figure publicly, according to Screen Daily.

This is Google's first equity stake in a film studio. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis framed the goal plainly in a blog post: "We believe the best way to develop tools that empower artists is to work directly with them."

The structure matters. Per The Next Web, the deal is nonexclusive, meaning A24 is not locked into Google's tools. Critically, Google gets no access to A24's film and television library and cannot train AI models on the studio's back catalogue. A24 retains full creative control.

What They're Actually Building

The first concrete application is an AI storyboarding tool, developed under something called A24 Labs. Storyboards are the rough visual sketches directors use to plan scenes before cameras roll.

Scott Belsky, an A24 partner who leads the studio's technology division, told the Wall Street Journal the partnership differs from most Hollywood AI pitches because competing vendors typically sell AI as a cost-cutting measure rather than a quality-improvement tool. A24's representative told the Journal the tools "won't look anything like the prompted generative type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with."

DeepMind VP of Product Eli Collins said the collaboration is "research-led and filmmaker-informed," with A24 filmmakers providing real-time feedback as DeepMind builds.

A24's Position Right Now

This deal lands when A24 is at the peak of its commercial run. Backrooms, directed by Kane Parsons, made over $300 million globally, per Engadget and Screen Daily, making it the studio's highest-grossing film ever. Marty Supreme made nearly $200 million and earned multiple Oscar nominations. A24's revenue has more than doubled over the past two years and the company was valued at $3.5 billion in a 2024 Thrive Capital funding round, according to Screen Daily. The $75 million Google investment is roughly the same size as that earlier round.

A24 is also in pre-production on an Elden Ring adaptation directed by Alex Garland with a budget multiple sources place well above $100 million, according to The Next Web.

The Strongest Objection, Stated Fairly

The concern from workers in the film industry is legitimate and specific. Engadget notes there are at least 2,000 working storyboard artists in the Hollywood system. If AI storyboarding tools replace even a fraction of that work, those are real jobs held by real craftspeople who trained for years. The pattern in adjacent industries has not been reassuring: automation tends to compress lower-tier work before it visibly eliminates senior roles, and the people at the bottom of the professional ladder absorb the initial impact.

Kane Parsons, the director of A24's biggest-ever hit, has called AI "genuinely harmful" and a signifier of "cultural and economic rot," according to Engadget. That is not a fringe view inside the studio's own filmmaker community.

A24 and Google's counter-position is that the tools are framed as assistive, not replacements, and that filmmakers will shape what gets built. Whether that framing holds as the technology matures is the open question. A tool that speeds up storyboarding for a director could simultaneously reduce the billable hours available to the artists who currently do that work for a living.

Hollywood's Broader AI Consolidation

A24 is not acting in isolation. Netflix acquired Ben Affleck's AI filmmaking startup InterPositive in March and has since stood up INKubator, an internal AI-native animation studio, according to The Next Web. Lionsgate took an equity stake in generative AI video company Runway to support pre- and post-production work. OpenAI is backing Critterz, an AI-assisted animated feature with a sub-$30 million budget that was screened at Cannes. Martin Scorsese joined AI image startup Black Forest Labs as an adviser in June and is using its FLUX model to storyboard his next film, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.

Every major studio and several streaming platforms are now running some version of this experiment simultaneously.

The Unresolved Question

The deal's nonexclusive structure means A24 can walk away from Google's tools if they prove inadequate or if filmmaker resistance hardens. But the $75 million investment creates a financial relationship that outlasts any single product decision. Whether A24 can genuinely keep filmmakers in control of what DeepMind builds, rather than gradually adopting whatever tools the research partnership produces regardless of creative preference, will determine whether this deal looks different from the others in two or three years.