Variety<\/em>\u2018s co-editor-in-chief and co-president Ramin Setoodeh, focused on new technologies and featured Blumhouse\u2019s chief marketing officer Karen Barragan, Mattel\u2019s chief design and innovation officer Chris Down, Adobe\u2019s vice president of generative AI new business ventures Hannah Elsakr, Fox Entertainment\u2019s president of marketing Daren Schillace and the NFL\u2019s senior vice president of social and influencer marketing Ian Trombetta.<\/p>\n\n\tBarragan explained that as YouTube grows in cultural dominance, it has helped train a new generation of film directors. \u201cBefore, legacy media was a gateholder to who could make a movie. Now you look at someone like Markiplier who made his own movie, self-distributed and still got into 3,000 AMC theaters,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have found a couple of directors on YouTube, and they\u2019re making major studio movies.\u201d Blumhouse has produced two movies directed by YouTubers coming out this May: Focus Features\u2019 \u201cObsession,\u201d directed by Curry Barker; and A24\u2019s \u201cBackrooms,\u201d directed by Kane Parsons. \u201cWhere we have found a playground for directors is in a forum where they already have a following. They have an audience. People know them. So the hope is that they\u2019ll migrate and help evolve how the studios have worked before.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cPeople are greenlighting themselves, which is an incredible thing,\u201d Elsakr concurred, adding that she believes AI will have a similarly democratizing impact on entertainment. Acknowledging people\u2019s hesitations about AI, she said, \u201cPhotoshop, when it launched in the \u201990s, people weren\u2019t happy with Adobe. They felt like we were destroying craft. If you talk to the folks at Pixar, when 3D animation came out, that was really jarring for the industry. I think we\u2019re at that [point] that again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tSchillace spoke about experiencing some trial and error related to implementing AI ethically. \u201cIt\u2019s about the transparency of it,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve put things up on social that we thought were obviously AI, but didn\u2019t say anything about it, and the immediate and vast rejection was surprising. It became about, \u2018You\u2019re taking jobs from artists.\u2019 There were artists who actually made this. We didn\u2019t provide any context or the transparency that we should have, and I think there\u2019s so much misinformation out there. Everyone just goes with the headlines of, \u2018You\u2019re taking jobs\u2019 \u2014 AI is also creating jobs. I understand the balance of that. Even internally, the transparency [is helpful]: \u2018We\u2019re now doing this through our operations team. None of you are leaving, but your jobs are this<\/em> now. You incorporate AI into your job. It makes you faster. You can focus.\u2019 The second I say \u2018AI,\u2019 people hear \u2018headcount.\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018That\u2019s not what I said.’\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tAfter the tech panel, Setoodeh moderated a fireside chat with actor and producer Mark Duplass, who gave an alternate point of view on AI. Though he emphasized the importance of democratizing the entertainment industry and how widening access to burgeoning filmmaking technology helped launch his career decades ago, he doesn\u2019t have plans to incorporate AI into his creative practice.<\/p>\n
\n\tAI \u201cplays almost zero role in my work, and it\u2019s not because I am coming from the standpoint of, \u2018This is empirically, ethically wrong.\u2019 But I just am such an analog dude that it\u2019s the way that my brain works,\u201d Duplass said. \u201cThe way for me to democratize my access to my art and [\u2026] make something with what you have available is not to go to AI and build the backgrounds. The way I do that is, \u2018Well, I\u2019m just gonna write for two or three actors, and I\u2019m gonna set it in two or three locations, and build it in a way so I can shoot this comfortably in eight days.\u2019 I\u2019ve been sort of AI-ing myself in that regard and using natural, organic tools to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen asked for his thoughts about the future of indie filmmaking, Duplass said, \u201cYou have these things developing: people\u2019s love for vinyl, people\u2019s love for jazz clubs, people\u2019s love for niche things that they want to overpay for to keep alive and nourish. I\u2019m a big proponent and supporter of Vidiots in Los Angeles. And what we\u2019re seeing there is two movie theaters that are full<\/em>, and they\u2019re showing movies that are available to stream at home for almost free, and they\u2019re paying 14 bucks to see it in a community with people and talk to people at the bar afterwards. They\u2019re also going into the video store [\u2026] to feel like it\u2019s 1997 again. [\u2026] Is that affecting the larger economic plays of the industry? No. Might it get to the place where it\u2019s strong enough and niche enough that somebody starts to pay attention and maybe they overpay to get a piece of that company so they can have that good look? We\u2019ve seen things like that. So I\u2019m not a nihilist. I\u2019m a realist, and I have some hope.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source variety.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At Variety New Frontiers in Entertainment presented by Adobe during SXSW, innovators across different facets of the entertainment industry came together to discuss the futures they\u2019re working towards. The first panel, moderated by Variety\u2018s co-editor-in-chief and co-president Ramin Setoodeh, focused on new technologies and featured Blumhouse\u2019s chief marketing officer Karen Barragan, Mattel\u2019s chief design and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2333954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[452231,26738],"class_list":["post-2333953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-adobe-sxsw-panels","tag-sxsw"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Adobe-and-Blumhouse-Execs-on-AI-and-Democratizing-Entertainment-at.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2333953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2333955,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2333953\/revisions\/2333955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2333954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2333953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2333953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2333953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}