China's AI actress asks $24,900 an ad, and human-acted dramas still get 25 times the views

Laika's Travis Knight draws his AI line at consent, and can't fully vouch for his vendors

Travis Knight calls AI built on other artists' work theft but has no quarrel with tools in an artist's hands. Asked whether Wildwood is free of AI, he could only say "as far as I'm aware."

After 16 years of development, Laika's Wildwood opens in US and UK theaters today, and the studio's chief, Travis Knight, has been clear that his objection to AI does not start with the computer: "A pencil is technology, a paintbrush is technology, a 3D printer is technology, a computer workstation is technology." The problem begins "when you've ingested the material that an artist has actually created, and then regurgitate it in a different way," which he calls theft.

His own studio fits that reading. In 2020 Laika and Intel showed machine learning tools for cleaning up the seams on its puppets' printed faces, trained on Laika's own archive, and on Wildwood the effects team dressed digital set extensions with scans of the studio's physical sets. Both learn from work Laika made and owns.

The harder moment came when he was asked whether Wildwood itself is free of AI. "As far as I'm aware. With these big VFX houses, sometimes you don't know what's going on," he said. In August a concept vendor on Masters of the Universe, the film he directed earlier this year, said it uses AI "when it speeds production up."

If the head of a studio that owns its whole production can't vouch for every subcontractor, an independent filmmaker hiring a freelancer for two weeks can't either without asking in writing. It is also why "no generative AI" is a safer promise in credits than "no AI."

Source: Travis Knight interviews published Oct 21 and 22, 2026; vendor reply as reported Aug 25, 2026.

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Hunger Games producer says AI copies of the cast's voices tested lines before the actors recorded them

Producer Nina Jacobson says Sunrise on the Reaping tried new dialogue in AI copies of its actors' voices before the real cast recorded the keepers. She did not name the tool or the actors' consent terms.

Before the cast of The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping recorded new lines, the filmmakers heard them first in AI copies of the actors' voices. Producer Nina Jacobson described the step on stage at IndieWire's Future of Filmmaking Summit in Los Angeles this week.

The use she described is narrow. When an editor wants to try a replacement line in post, the old fix was a stand-in reading or the editor's own voice. Jacobson said an AI approximation now fills that gap for lines "you might not even keep," and the keepers are recorded by the real cast in a normal dialogue replacement session. "We would still never use it because it's not our actors," she said, adding that the dialogue still comes from the writer: "I don't ask Claude, 'What should they say?'"

That makes the AI voice a temp track, like the borrowed music an editor cuts to before the composer delivers. The difference is that a temp score borrows someone else's work, while this stand-in is built from the cast's own voices.

Jacobson did not say which tool made the voices or what the actors agreed to when their voices were copied, and the report carries no Lionsgate comment. The film opens in theaters on November 20.

Source: Nina Jacobson at IndieWire's Future of Filmmaking Summit, reported by IndieWire, Oct 22, 2026.

Stallone speaks out on AI: it's here to stay, and he wants to make a half human, half AI film

On a football podcast, Sylvester Stallone said AI is here to stay and that he wants to make a half human, half AI film, even knowing some creatives will push back. He named no project.

Sylvester Stallone was asked a simple question on this week's Stick to Football, The Overlap's podcast with Gary Neville, Roy Keane, Jill Scott and Ian Wright: did he see himself as a risk-taker? He said yes, and offered an example nobody had asked for. "AI is here to stay," he said, adding that he had wanted to make something "half human, half AI" and that "everyone's going nuts."

Then he conceded the point. He said he would take the risk "even though you get blasted bombastically from the creative community. And that, they're right. They're right. But we can't stop this, this avalanche."

The trades tidied the tape. In our transcript of the episode audio, his line about the future was "maybe 20 Elvises, avatars," and right after "if you don't go with it, you will be trampled by it" he added "I think." He named no project. The closest documented match is the young Rambo made with AI that he said he pitched in September 2025, and the outrage over that pitch is, on the record, his own account.

The market he describes already exists. Stars and estates license voices and likenesses project by project, and on a union film the SAG-AFTRA contract requires separate signed consent before a digital replica is used.

Our take: Stallone isn't announcing a film. He is showing where star money wants to go, and consent and licensing will answer the critics he says are right.

Source: Stick to Football episode audio (The Overlap, Oct 22, 2026), with reporting by Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline.

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Stage 32's no AI pledge covers the people who read scripts, not the people who write them

Deadline pitched Stage 32's new script Marketplace as a filter against AI slop, but the company's own pledge only promises human readers. Its pages set no rule on AI-written scripts, and a high score on paid notes lists a script automatically.

Deadline pitched it as a filter against AI slop. Stage 32's new Marketplace, launched this week, lets more than 3,000 film and TV executives browse vetted scripts, download them and ask the writers for meetings. Deadline quoted founder Richard Botto saying the platform has a strict no AI policy.

Stage 32's own launch post and Marketplace pages don't mention AI at all. Its no-AI language sits on its script notes page, and it points at the people doing the reading: "Real people, not AI. Every read and every note comes from a working reader or executive." We found no rule in its terms on AI-written scripts, and nothing on how they would be spotted.

The most direct way in is a paid read. Studio Level Notes start at $249 and Premium Development Notes at $149, and a score of 95 or above on either lists the script automatically. Contest wins and executive requests also qualify. Botto says there is "no paying to be placed," and nobody can buy a listing outright.

Our take: human-made is becoming a selling point in the script business. Stage 32 guarantees that a human reads your script. On its public pages, it does not promise that a human wrote everything on the shelf, and AI-native makers still have no independent signal of who made the work and how.

Source: Deadline (Max Goldbart), Oct 22, 2026, and Stage 32's own launch post, Marketplace and notes pages.

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Gossip Goblin's AI feature has a sales agent, but the Oscar rule is the harder sell

AGC will show Gods Don't Give Gifts to buyers at the American Film Market before a self-released December 4 US opening. It is not AGC's first AI film, and the Academy has not said whether AI-made motion counts as animation.

Gods Don't Give Gifts, the AI feature Zack London made as Gossip Goblin, now has a sales agent. AGC International will show it to buyers on the first day of the American Film Market, which runs November 10 to 15, ahead of a US opening on December 4 on under 1,000 screens and a campaign for Best Animated Feature.

It is not the first AI film AGC has taken to market. The company launched world sales on Critterz before Cannes in May. What is new is a feature its makers call fully AI-generated, from a YouTube creator, with a US date. No US distributor has been named: the US release runs through producers Fable and Gossip Goblin, with WME Independent advising.

The harder sell is the Academy. Its rules say AI tools "neither help nor harm" a film's chances, but the animation rule asks for movement "created by any human means." Nobody knows yet whether motion made by an AI video tool counts. Entries close on November 12, the third day of the market, and the film still needs a seven-day run in one of six US cities to qualify.

The audience is what is being sold. The release claims 15 million trailer views across platforms, while the main YouTube upload shows about 2.19 million. London's channel has about 1.57 million subscribers.

Our take: the sale is real and the first is not. The road from YouTube to a cinema screen is open to an AI maker, but it runs through a self-funded release and an Academy rule nobody has tested on AI-made motion.

Source: Deadline, Variety and Screen Daily, Oct 22, 2026, with the Academy's 99th Awards rules.

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