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Warner Brothers To Use AI-Driven Technology To Assist With Marketing And Distribution

Photo courtesy of Christian Joudrey via Unsplash.

Warner Brothers To Use AI-Driven Technology To Assist With Marketing And Distribution

By Allyson Vannatta, Staff Writer

Warner Brothers movie division signed a deal with Cinelytic to use their AI-driven project management system.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the system, which was launched last year, can assess the value of a star in any country or area to help predict how much the movie will make in theaters. The data gathered from the system will be used at the greenlight stage of a project to help executives with decision-making.

The system isn’t able to predict the next billion-dollar box office hit, however it will help executives spend less time on repetitive tasks and help them with budgeting for packaging, marketing and distribution release dates.

Tobias Queisser founded Cinelytic four years ago and has been working on this new project management system for the last three years.

Warner Brothers is the fourth studio to sign a deal with the company. Ingenious Media, Productivity Media and most recently STX all use the artificial intelligence program from Cinelytic.

The system seems to be most helpful during festival season where studios find themselves in bidding wars over projects.

Queisser said, “The system can calculate in seconds what used to take days to assess by a human when it comes to general film package evaluation or a star’s worth.”

“We make tough decisions every day that affect what — and how — we produce and deliver films to theaters around the world, and the more precise our data is, the better we will be able to engage our audiences,” addedsenior VP of distribution Tonis Kiis.

James Vincent, an AI and robotics reporter for The Verge, said the system is still a bit hazy and what it can predict might be common sense.

“If you put Tom Cruise in your movie, your movie is going to do pretty well at the box office. If it’s a big action film in the summer, then it’s also going to do pretty well. So there is a question, to what degree are these important or even (ph) useful insights, or are they just kind of confirming what movie studios already know?”

Vincent also said a source from Warner Brothers told him they will mostly be using the system for marketing and distribution, not to decide whether or not to greenlight their movies.

Although Movieguide might not use AI-driven systems to predict what movies will do well at the box office, Movieguide has found over the years that movies that are family-friendly and contain faith-based content make the most money.

Movieguide’s system could be used free of charge to studios to help predict which of their projects will do better at the box office.