Variety's 'Open to AI' tours Innovative Dreams, an AI stage at Manhattan Beach Studios

Innovative Dreams, the AI soundstage Variety used to open its Open to AI feature, was co-launched by Luma and has nine staff and one finished show. It says it takes outside work, but no outside client is named yet.

Variety opened its long "Open to AI" feature on Tuesday at Stage 21, Manhattan Beach Studios, next door to the stage where The Mandalorian was shot. The company running it is Innovative Dreams, which the piece calls the AI offshoot of director Jon Erwin's Wonder Project. What it leaves out is that Luma, the AI video company, co-launched Innovative Dreams in April, and that Amazon Web Services backs it. About 85 minutes before the feature went live, Luma posted its own clip from the same floor, signed "Made with Luma".

The operation is smaller than the framing suggests. Its LinkedIn page lists nine people, and its one finished job is The Old Stories: Moses with Ben Kingsley, which the Los Angeles Times reported was shot in one week with about 100 crew. The feature's one hard number, a producer's claim that AI cut the Bitcoin budget from $200 million to $70 million, rests on a baseline he put at over $300 million six months earlier.

Here is how the stage works: actors perform in front of giant LED screens that show their world live, and AI builds and restyles that world, before and after the take. Many independent AI filmmakers already work exactly this way, outside the studio system.

In practice, the useful line is in the launch release, which says the stage will take outside work "across a wide range of genres and budget levels." No outside client has been named yet. A tight before and after reel is the pitch, and it's worth asking any stage which AI tools it runs before you plan a shoot around it.

Source: Variety, Luma, Los Angeles Times, TheWrap, Oct 13, 2026.

Read the full article: thegenerated.com/stories/innovative-dreams-ai-soundstage-luma-variety-20261014