Earlier this year, IndieWire shared a report that an enormous amount of AI production companies have launched within the last three years. Not all of those were created equal, but the ones that stand out — and potentially have staying power in Hollywood — have noticeably been backed by other major industry players.
On Tuesday, November 4, Obsidian Studio announced its launch with a goal of blending live-action film projects with AI-powered digital production. And it will be kicking things off with a big name behind it, care of a creative partnership with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment.
Obsidian co-founders Wes Walker and Louis Gheysens, in a conversation with IndieWire, said they’ll be producing several long-form projects, including a feature film project, for Imagine and in partnership with Howard, with whom Walker developed a friendship over the last year. Obsidian has, throughout 2025, quietly been working with various brands, including Louis Vuitton, Longchamp, Crayola, Aramco, Amazon, NBA, and ESPN, but the partnership with Imagine will allow Obsidian to expand into original narrative projects.
“Advertising moves at an incredibly rapid pace. This year we were really blessed to do really high budget, beautiful commercials. And the speed at which we move, the pace at which we’re able to create, the openness to technology, the openness to try things, that’s really what’s incredible about advertising: we can really push boundaries together alongside some of the best teams in the world,” Walker said. “We’re taking and researching and studying what we’re learning in advertising, bringing that into the entertainment space, and then using that to serve Imagine Entertainment projects.”
“At Imagine, we are committed to emotionally resonant, human storytelling and we have already seen the ways AI can be a beneficial tool in that mission. Obsidian’s artist-led approach is exactly the kind of collaboration we stand behind to amplify human creativity and we’re excited to be working with them,” said Justin Wilkes, President of Imagine Entertainment, in a statement.
Obsidian has two proprietary tools it uses, one called EchoChrome that is designed to enhance image quality of low bit depth AI video and bring it into high-level VFX productions. Walker said, for campaigns for Cadillac and Mercedes, they’ve been able to incorporate AI into 3D volume stage backgrounds in order to blend live action and AI-generated CG.
The other is called DigitalForge, and it refers to how Obsidian uses AI by integrating it into the production workflow. The company has recruited two storyboard artists, Marc Vena and Tani Kunitake, who have worked on films like “Black Panther,” “Logan,” “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” and more, and will train models based on their work to then build further worlds based on those creations. Walker describes being able to prompt AI ideas in real-time on set, to edit in real-time, and that “AI is not post; AI is production.”
“Our approach is really about amplifying what artists can do, amplifying what DPs can do, amplifying what storyboard artists can do through the technology, and then creating worlds from that,” he said.
Walker stresses that Imagine did not become fascinated with Obsidian’s work just because of AI, but because of the work they’re doing with VFX in other tools like Unreal Engine, Maya, Blender, and Houdini. He added that generative AI is not always the best tool for every project.
“We are artists working alongside artists. Everyone in the team is a high level artist, and we really believe that passionate, disciplined creatives are the world builders. We have the ability to to see,” Walker said. “That in service of other directors is really where the magic happens for us as directors. We know what other directors go through. We know the struggles that they have in bringing their visions to life… the tech and the tools don’t matter. What matters is the audience experience. What matters next is the story and the emotion that the story is bringing about. And then we utilize the tech in service of that.”
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