An AI Filmmaker Was Secretly Hired to Fix a Hollywood Production's Budget Gap
A filmmaker says he was secretly hired to help a cash-strapped Hollywood production use AI, and calls the industry "full of hypocrites" about it.
Mike Bennion, a UK-based AI filmmaker and finalist at this year's Reply AI Film Festival in Venice, told Semafor he was recently approached to use AI on a Hollywood movie currently in production that had run short on cash. "They wanted to see if AI could help fill that gap at a cheaper price," he said. He wouldn't name the film or the studio, saying he was "sworn to secrecy."
Bennion's Actual Point
Bennion didn't frame the anecdote as a scandal so much as evidence of a pattern he sees across the industry: real, active use of AI on real productions, paired with a reluctance to say so publicly. He described the industry as "full of hypocrites" who deploy the technology while staying quiet about how and why.
That framing lands differently coming from someone with real standing in the space. Bennion's own film, Kev, an intimate portrait of his personal experience with blindness, built using Midjourney, Nano Banana, Kling, Veo 3, and ElevenLabs, is a festival finalist screening in Venice this same weekend, not a fringe experiment.
He's Not the Only One Facing This Tension
Fellow finalist Jacopo Reale, a creative director at Rome-based Labyrinth Studios, is currently working on an AI-produced show for Sky Cinema, the British subscription service owned by Sky Group. Sky Group didn't respond to Semafor's request for comment.
Reale has already experienced the sharper edge of public backlash directly: when his first AI-assisted film went viral on X, he received multiple death threats over his use of the technology. That's the real tension sitting underneath Bennion's "hypocrites" comment, public reaction to visible AI use can be genuinely hostile, which gives studios and individual filmmakers alike a real incentive to keep quiet about it even while actively using it.
The Studios Aren't Actually Hiding Their Own Deals
Some of this activity is public. A24 signed a $75 million deal with Google. Disney struck a $1 billion deal with OpenAI to license IP for Sora, its now-discontinued AI video product. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos disclosed on a recent earnings call that AI had been used in roughly 300 Netflix titles so far this year, citing efficiency and cost as the reasoning.
The gap Bennion is describing isn't that studios refuse to make any AI deals publicly, several clearly will. It's the specific, individual instances, a cash-strapped production quietly hiring someone like him mid-shoot, that stay unnamed and undisclosed.
Competitive Context
This runs parallel to a separate Venice story from this same festival: "Be Brave," a documentary about Diesel founder Renzo Rosso that never filmed its subject at all, recreating him entirely through AI, premiered with the festival's own artistic director publicly defending its inclusion.
Together, these two stories paint a real split in how AI filmmaking gets handled institutionally: openly embraced and defended at the level of a festival selection, but handled quietly and anonymously at the level of individual production decisions on major studio films.
The Signal in the Noise
Bennion's specific anecdote is unverifiable, no film or studio named, and there's no way to confirm the account independently. But it fits a broader pattern that is verifiable: studios are willing to announce large, structured AI partnerships publicly while individual, ad hoc uses of the same technology on active productions stay deliberately unnamed. That gap between public deal-making and private, unacknowledged use is arguably the more interesting story than any single anecdote.
Does the willingness to sign public, headline AI deals while keeping individual production uses secret change how you'd read Hollywood's actual relationship with this technology?
The Details
- Mike Bennion: UK AI filmmaker, Reply AI Film Festival finalist for "Kev," made with Midjourney, Nano Banana, Kling, Veo 3, and ElevenLabs
- Claim: recently hired anonymously to help a cash-strapped Hollywood production currently in production reduce costs using AI; film and studio undisclosed
- Jacopo Reale: creative director, Labyrinth Studios (Rome), working on an AI-produced show for Sky Cinema; previously received death threats after a viral AI film
- Confirmed public AI deals: A24 + Google ($75M), Disney + OpenAI/Sora ($1B), Netflix (~300 titles using AI this year, per Ted Sarandos)
- Reply AI Film Festival: second edition, theme "Generation of Emotions," jury chaired by Gabriele Muccino, premiere event in Venice, September 2026
