AI is giving Neighbours a second life on phones, starting with Margot Robbie's Donna
Fremantle licensed the soap's archive to RoseBerry Media, whose AI tool finds the best scenes in decades of episodes and recuts them for phones. Nothing is generated, actors and writers get repeat fees, and crew pay and consent are the open questions.
Neighbours ran for 40 years and more than 9,300 episodes, and most of it has sat unwatched since. Now AI is giving it a second life on phones, starting with Margot Robbie's three years as Donna Freedman.
Fremantle, which produced the soap, has licensed its archive to RoseBerry Media, a US company that makes vertical series for its Epis app. RoseBerry's AI editing tool, RedSnapper, scans decades of episodes to map storylines and find the strongest scenes, then reframes them for a phone screen. Two of Donna's storylines become about 150 minutes of short episodes. Fremantle says the tool makes no new scenes, changes no faces and uses no synthetic voices, and that a human editor approves every cut. Fremantle's Jens Richter called it a way of "bringing much-loved IP to new audiences."
The deal terms are still being worked out. The BBC reports Fremantle is in talks with two unions and will pay residuals, the repeat fees owed when work airs again, to actors and writers, but not yet to crew. Some former co-stars, including Matt Werkmeister and Sam Clark, say nobody approached them first, and the actors' union MEAA wants clear rules. Robbie has not commented.
Our take: this is AI as an editor, not a faker. Nothing on screen is invented, and the work that made the show is the whole point. Get consent and pay right, crew included, and every old TV library becomes a new release, and new work for the people who make it.
Source: BBC News, Oct 29, 2026; The Guardian, Oct 26, 2026.
