Wonder Project And AI Firm Luma Launch Innovative Dreams As Home For “Hybrid Filmmaking”
By Dade Hayes, Deadline
Wonder Project, the independent producer of series like House of David, has teamed with pedigreed AI startup Luma to launch a new company, Innovative Dreams.
Described as a blend of production services provider, R&D lab and post-production and visual effects house, the new company is backed by Amazon Web Services. Wonder Project has had a multi-year relationship with Amazon MGM Studios, and runs a subscription service housed on Prime Video, where its originals also stream.
Innovative Dreams is championing what it says is a new method it calls “real-time hybrid filmmaking.” The company’s CEO, Jon Erwin, who also founded Wonder Project along with Netflix alum Kelly Merryman Hoogstraten, says the approach combines performance capture, virtual production and visual effects. It infuses generative AI technology into every stage of production, looking to widen access to tools historically available only to well-resourced A-list filmmakers like James Cameron.
The entertainment industry is in the midst of a reckoning with AI, which has brought disruption to many sectors of the U.S. economy. Many companies are beginning to lean into the potential, though it is a delicate proposition. Securing protections from the downside of the technology has been a core goal of labor unions in negotiations this year with studios and streamers as the parties look to avoid a repeat of the dual strikes of 2023. The onset of AI has also coincided with a period of austerity for many large producers and studios, which are also contending with consolidation and ongoing challenges facing legacy media.
By creating a new paradigm that differs from the green-screen approach of many top-end productions, Erwin says Innovative Dreams is reaffirming the importance of human actors and foregrounding their performances. (Ben Kingsley and O-T Fagbenle, stars of The Old Stories: Moses, a Wonder Project three-parter premiering later this spring, recently joined Erwin for a behind-the-scenes look at the new production method.
