EXCLUSIVE: MindRiot Entertainment, the transatlantic production outfit co-founded by Justin MacGregor and Jonathan Keasey, is launching a slate of what they have described as “AI-ready animation films” under the banner Hum-AI-ne ©ontent.
MindRiot has teamed with Seattle-based lawyer Philip Egger and his tech outfit SJ4 on the venture. Egger and SJ4 have created a new text-to-video AI technology that will be used to create the projects. Egger and his collaborators hosted a showcase at this year’s Cannes Film Festival where they exhibited the new technology for industry players before deciding to team up with MindRiot.
Hum-AI-ne ©ontent’s current slate contains 8 projects that MacGregor and Keasey have amassed, including episodic, both long and short form as well as limited series. The company has said it is currently in discussions with “A-list directors about helping produce their own animation films.” The first project out of Hum-AI-ne ©ontent will be the animated family adventure title Gelert: A Prince Rises, which is currently in pre-production. Keasey has also developed a high-octane action pic called Renegade Racer with Scott Waugh (The Expendables 4), which may join Hum-AI-ne ©ontent’s slate.
“Having an ethical approach is paramount to me when we begin making films using AI,” Waugh said. “We must still preserve the talent of actors, writers, directors, musicians, and post-production artists and we will do that with Keasey’s heroic story.”
Justin MacGregor and Jonathan Keasey.
Keasey, a WGA member, has said all projects created under the banner will be union-stamped, with voice actors and animators compensated correctly and all work credited fairly.
“I was skeptical, to say the least,” Keasey said of the AI technology. “Ever since the WGA strike, I began to call myself an intentional luddite. I won’t even try ChatGPT. We went on strike for over 200 days because it’s unethical for AI to steal the words from screenwriters’ minds and pass them off as original.”
Keasey told us that it was after Egger and his team screened an AI-generated film for him that his “mind was blown.”
“Visually it was stunning, mesmerizing. That said, it needed more heart,” he said, adding that he took Egger and his tech bros through a traditional Hollywood notes session.
“I used The Big Lebowski and Dallas Buyers Club and Trainspotting – my personal all-time favorite – as examples of movies that AI could never make because of the irreplaceable human element that’s required for movie magic.”
That’s how the decision to combine their efforts, he said, was born.
“We just want to use our unrivaled Super AI and Stochastic AI to help,” Egger added.
MindRiot Entertainment is best known as the company Danielle Deadwyler’s Parallel and the upcoming OceanGate pic Salvaged. The company’s buzzy slate also includes an adaptation of Tobias Wolff’s National Medal of the Arts winning The Barracks Thief, the Josh Swindell prison drama Four The Yard, and Gary Payton docuseries Trash Talk. The next project released from Mindriot, however, will be the Rose Byrne-starrer Tow, a film based on the true story of a mother and daughter combatting Seattle’s housing crisis.
Keasey is repped by David Matlof and Adam Vitable at Hirsch Wallerstein Hayum Matlof + Fishman and Circle Management + Production. Scott Waugh is repped by Stuart Rosenthal at Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson, & Glusker and by UTA.