Stories
- Runway's private video models now have a managed home on Baseten. Who's buying?
Runway has sold licenses for its closed video models since August, and Baseten now hosts them single-tenant, fine-tuned or stock, with a 99.99% uptime SLA. Nobody has named a licensee or a price, the license is annual, and on Baseten your model runs in Baseten's cloud, not your building.
- Austin's AI film festival puts the workflow on stage, mostly on Friday
The second Austin AI Film Festival runs 16 and 17 October at the Topfer at Zach Theatre. Friday's summit is where working directors walk through their workflows, with Dreamina and Beeble sessions on the bill. Saturday screens 40 films in five blocks, and the drop from 2,000 entries to 700 follows a switch from free to paid entry.
- Malfoid drags Harry Potter out of the wizarding world and into the dojo
In Malfoid's Diary Ep. 2, nachos2d (@NACHOS2D_) puts Harry Potter in a karate dojo with Malfoid, the fan-made female Draco Malfoy, for 30 seconds of Pokémon-era impacts and cutaways in Japanese with English subtitles. It is a craft pick that ran below his usual reach, and it is an unofficial fan work.
- OpenAI's 10-minute Higgsfield claim is about the agent, not the video model
OpenAI's customer story says Higgsfield went from one-minute to 10-minute AI videos on GPT-6 Astra. Astra is the agent that plans and calls tools, not the video model, the evidence is Higgsfield's own tutorials, and the channel posted a 95-minute AI feature before Astra arrived.
- Hollywood's showcase AI soundstage is nine people, co-launched by Luma, and open for hire
Innovative Dreams, the AI soundstage Variety used to open its Open to AI feature, was co-launched by Luma and is backed by AWS, neither of which the piece mentions. It has nine staff, one finished show and no named outside client yet, and the feature's one hard number on cost is a producer estimate whose baseline has moved.
- Lu's McFLY V turns Back to the Future's "Johnny B. Goode" into a Spider-Verse comic
Lu's 57-second fan animation, made on Higgsfield, restages Back to the Future's dance scene in a Spider-Verse comic palette. The lip and instrument sync slip, and it is an unofficial fan work.
- A real crew made the $1.5M AI Christmas feature. The $80M is its director's estimate
Merry the Christmas Witch was made by a hybrid crew of about 50, with actors, hand-drawn storyboards, a composer and Foley around the AI layer. Walsh puts the cost at $1.5M against an $80M live-action estimate, and both figures are his own with no line items. The film has no distributor yet.
- Epic tells its Star Wars and Marvel shooter team: 'no more hand-written code'
Epic Games has delayed its unannounced Disney shooter and told the team there will be 'no more hand-written code' and art 'generated with full AI workflows', according to Bloomberg's sources. The report rests on one director's message. Disney, which owns a stake in Epic and is suing Midjourney over the same characters, has not commented.
- Umesh's FLUX 3 park film is flawless until a single leaf lands
Umesh's 15-second downtown park film holds one nostalgic, film-stock grade across nine shots, animated with FLUX 3 from a Midjourney v8.2 still he made with a public style code. The only giveaway is a dry leaf that lands on a scooter seat with no bounce. He hasn't said which platform, prompt or settings made the video.
- Nicolas Cage says he didn't sign Spider-Noir's AI waiver. The contract lets anyone refuse
At New York Comic Con, Nicolas Cage said he didn't sign the waiver to let them use AI on Spider-Noir and called Amazon AI-friendly. Sony Pictures Television produced the show and the waiver is unpublished, but the 2026 SAG-AFTRA deal does require a separate, specific signature for replica consent, so performers can refuse it.
- Prime Video buys an AI spin-off of The Pit, with human actors under every face
Prime Video has taken global rights to Çukur: Vartolu, Ay Yapım's AI-made origin story for the Turkish hit The Pit. The studio says human actors performed every scene and AI built the faces and settings over them. Amazon hasn't commented, and there is still no release date, runtime or cast.
- Netflix's 300 AI titles come with a map, and a human at every exit
At Creative Asia in Busan, Netflix's Sung Q Lee, Weta FX CTO Kimball Thurston and director Kang Yun-sung described the same loop: AI widens the options and a person picks. The 300-title figure repeats Netflix's July letter with no list, and Kang's 40% saving is a fundraising estimate for a film not yet shot.
- Danny Boyle didn't ask Thatcher's estate. Here's his case for the AI face in 'Ink'
At the London Film Festival, Danny Boyle said he used an AI face swap to put the real Margaret Thatcher into 'Ink' and declined to ask her estate. He wanted the scene to cut straight into real news headlines. The relationship he cites checks out, the late-night visits are hearsay, and the credits question is still open.
- Gossip Goblin's AI film wants an animation Oscar, so the Academy must define animation
Fable has moved Zack London's AI anthology Gods Don't Give Gifts to December 4 and will campaign it for Best Animated Feature, forcing the Academy to say whether generated frames count as human animation. No distributor, running time or qualifying run has been announced yet.
- Pierrick Chevallier brings a K-pop magazine cover to life with MiniMax H3
French VFX artist Pierrick Chevallier fed two K-pop magazine covers into MiniMax H3 and got 15 seconds of type sweeping in front of, behind and around the models, with sound that hits every cut. He has not shared his prompt or said whether the audio is native, and H3's open weights exclude the US and UK.
- Four Indian studios made AI films with YouTube's backing. Here's what they built
India's state-backed creative-tech institute and YouTube screened Chekavar, DEVI: The Nine Astras, Chanakya and Laika for ministry officials on 7 October. The support was Google tool credits, facilities and mentors with no published amount, the studios were already making AI work, and only two of the four films are on YouTube so far.
- Fox Nation's "all-AI" Houdini series runs on actors wearing new faces
Fox Nation premieres the three-part Houdini: Back from the Dead on 14 October, billed as its first production made entirely with AI imagery. Red Rock Films says actors performed the roles and AI changed their faces, built on licensed archive. The tools are unnamed and the series is not the first of its kind.
- Junkyard King Chapter 3 is a riveting inter-dimensional romp from a 1.5-person crew
Henry Daubrez's Junkyard King Chapter 3 sends Artie, Kai and a mechanical crow through a gate into Avalon, a riveting romp with a punk manga look and a shape-shifting score. He made it with a crew of one and a half in four weeks, though invideo supports the compute, which he puts at $1,000 to $1,500 a finished minute.
- A Yoruba AI feature sold its own tickets. The app couldn't keep up
Mysterious Tech Studio and Tanwa Hameed premiered Asiri Ilu Awon Osu on the Docuth rental app on 5 October, then apologized when buyers could not sign up, pay or watch. The studio calls it a surge, but no viewer or sales figure exists, and the 80% AI share and the "first" billing are the makers' own claims.
- Calira's 15-second winter fashion film gets slow motion right
Calira's 15-second winter fashion film, made with Seedance 2.5 on Flova, holds one face across four shots and moves like real high-frame-rate footage slowed down. She published the full prompt, and the post is tagged for Flova's creator partner program; it does not say whether its audio came from the model.
- An AI video company shipped a free Premiere clone built with Claude. Its own roadmap says it's half ready
ArtCraft CEO Brandon Thomas built FilmCraft, a free open-source editor modeled on Premiere, with Claude in a matter of days. Its own roadmap says it is about half ready, with no plugins and untested Avid handoff. The real novelty for creators is that 650 commands let an AI agent cut, grade and export.
