Hollywood Studios Are Spending On AI To Control The Future Of Film

BusinessMediaHollywood Studios Are Spending On AI To Control The Future Of FilmByMaureen Kerr,Contributor.Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. Maureen Kerr covers AI, media and entertainment economics.Follow AuthorJun 01, 2026, 04:27am EDT--:-- / --:--This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.This voice experience is generated by AI. Learn more.Culver City, California where Amazon MGM Studios hosted the AI on The Lot conferencegettyWhen Amazon MGM Studios took the stage at the AI on the Lot conference in Culver City on May 27, the news was not a chip or a model. It was a slate of cartoons.Prime Video ordered three animated series under Amazon’s new GenAI Creators’ Fund: Cupcake & Friends from BuzzFeed Studios, Love, Diana Music Hunters from Albie Hecht, chief content officer of pocket.watch, and Punky Duck from animator Jorge R. Gutierrez, of The Book of Life and Maya and the Three. Built with AWS, the fund gives selected creators AI production tools and financing to make projects for Prime Video.The framing was deliberate. Amazon is not selling AI as a replacement for animators. It is selling AI as a way for a small team to do work that used to take a full studio floor.That distinction is the story. After two years of strikes, protests and splashy deals, the industry’s AI question has changed. It is no longer whether studios will work with AI companies. It is whether they can build AI they own, govern and defend.Amazon’s Project Nara Shows Studios Want To Control AI ProductionAt the center sits Project Nara, an AWS-built production platform reserved for Amazon MGM and its fund creators. Amazon says it runs across animation and live action and plugs into the tools artists already use—Maya, Blender, Nuke, Unreal Engine, Adobe—mixing outside video models with proprietary ones trained on the studio’s own library.It also tracks provenance for every asset: proof of where an image came from. That is not a footnote. It is how...