A24 has built one of the most loyal audiences in modern film by making its logo feel like a signal of taste. That is why its new $75 million research partnership with DeepMind, Google’s in-house artificial intelligence lab, landed with unusual force.
The announcement arrived after Backrooms, A24’s recent horror movie mega-hit, passed $300 million at the global box office. The film’s themes of repetition, degradation, and a world that appears to be mindlessly copying our own had already been read in some circles as a critique of generative AI. Now the company behind it is working with one of the most visible AI labs in the world.
What A24 and DeepMind say they are building
According to the source article, the partnership was reported by the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The deal pairs A24 with DeepMind to create new filmmaking “tools” through A24 Labs, the company’s technology startup overseen by cofounder Scott Belsky.
Sophia Shin, who handles communications at A24, described the arrangement to WIRED as a research partnership. “This is a research partnership,” she said. “We're working side-by-side with DeepMind's researchers to learn, iterate, and build having an active hand in shaping new tools and workflows.”
A24’s argument is not that AI-generated movies are ready to replace traditional filmmaking. Shin stressed that the company wants artists involved in the development process before tools become fixed around them.
“Our relationship with our audience is something we don't take for granted,” A24’s Shin stresses. “This partnership exists because we want to dictate what tools get built for artists, and so they have a voice in shaping them rather than having tools handed to them. We'd rather have a seat at the table than on the sidelines.”
Google DeepMind did not immediately respond to requests for comment, according to the source article.
Why the backlash was immediate
The reaction was sharp because A24 is not seen by its fans as just another studio. It has become a tastemaker with an unusually strong identity in contemporary film culture. The source article describes the company as a rare American entertainment brand with its own loyal groupies, complete with caps, tote bags, and collectable, limited edition tie-dye t-shirts.
That fan relationship makes the AI partnership feel personal to some moviegoers. Earlier this week, when A24 released the trailer for Jesse Eisenberg’s new musical drama The Debut, comments on X included criticism of the DeepMind deal. Some fans posted tombstones, declared the death of the company, promised to illegally pirate the movie, or made remarks such as: “Pretty ironic that The Debut is the film that comes out in the mids [sic] of a24 ending itself with ai.”
The broader context matters. The source article frames the deal as part of a larger pattern of uneasy relationships between Silicon Valley and Hollywood. Late last year, Disney took a $1 billion stake in OpenAI’s video generation model, Sora, licensing access to characters including Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and C-3PO. A few months later, Sora itself was kaput.
AI’s presence in film is not a neutral topic for many creative workers and viewers. The source article points to fears around automating and killing entry-level jobs, threatening writers’ rooms, and putting AI-generated work into multiplexes. It also notes that some studios have sued AI companies for copyright infringement.
A24’s image makes the deal more complicated
A24’s reputation has been built through films that became central to American indie culture. Before Backrooms, the company was tied to titles including The Witch, Moonlight, Midsommar, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and the recent Marty Supreme.
The studio has also launched and supported filmmakers named in the source article, including Sophia Coppola, Denis Villeneuve, Ari Aster, Jane Schoenbrun, Celine Song, and the brothers Safdie. Since its 2012 founding, it has received dozens of Academy Award nominations.
Film critic Esther Rosenfield summed up the brand problem in cultural terms: “In the same way Disney sells nostalgia, A24 has sold the feeling of being very hip, and cutting-edge, for as long as they’ve been around.” If a company has marketed itself as a home for serious, distinctive filmmaking, a deal with Google’s AI lab will inevitably be read through that identity.
Andrew DeWaard, a media studies professor at UC San Diego and author of the 2024 book Derivative Media: How Wall Street Devours Culture, described A24’s audience strategy directly. “They have a very powerful and successful marketing department,” he said. “They’ve branded their company as edgy, forward-thinking, and appealing to young people. They’ve created a fandom for their company.”
The real fight is about control and taste
Supporters of AI partnerships in entertainment often argue that the technology is coming anyway, so artists and studios should help shape it. The source article notes that this “seat at the table” rationale has become familiar. DeWaard’s view is more skeptical: “They want to make AI feel inevitable,” he says of AI firms like Google. “They want to make AI feel like it’s everywhere. They want it to feel normal. Culture is part of that.”
Rosenfield sees a public-relations benefit for Google in partnering with A24. “They’re saying, ‘We want to launder our reputation through you,’” she says. “We want to make it look like serious artists are going to be making things with these tools. Because serious artists, by and large, aren’t.” The source article says A24 offered no comment when asked whether the Google deal was a form of reputation laundering.
The debate also turns on taste. Generative AI images are often labeled “slop,” and the source article argues that AI clients and large language models are not human and therefore cannot judge whether something is good or bad, ugly or beautiful, cool or boring. That makes A24’s cultural value unusually attractive: the company’s brand is built around taste, not just ownership of characters or franchises.
Shin pushed back against the idea that the DeepMind partnership is an intellectual property play. According to her, DeepMind users will not be able to pay to generate movies with copyrighted A24 characters such as Howie Rainer from Uncut Gems, The Green Knight, Charles Swan III, or the little lamb from Lamb.
She also said A24 is not embracing current AI screen output. “Truth is we don't necessarily love any of the current AI outputs on screen in Hollywood,” she said. “I don't even know if ultimately we'd create tech on that front.”
That leaves the partnership in a tense place. A24 says it wants influence over future filmmaking tools. Many of its fans hear something else: a company associated with human taste and indie credibility stepping closer to the AI industry at the very moment audiences and artists are questioning what that industry wants from cinema.