Netflix scoops up Ben Affleck’s AI company for $500M as streamer leans into technology

Netflix just dropped a ton of cash to scoop up Ben Affleck’s AI startup, but promised to keep human’s in the driver’s seat.

The streaming giant paid a whopping $587 million to acquire InterPositive, in an effort to juice up visual effects while keeping big-shot directors on board. A regulatory filing ripped the lid off the deal, revealing that the streaming company had completed the deal “consisting of cash consideration” in March this year. 

Netflix had announced the partnership earlier this year and said that the platform is “investing in creator-led innovation that keeps filmmakers at the center of the process.” 

The Academy Award-winning actor and director, who started the AI film-tech company in 2022, will be joining Netflix as a senior advisor and his entire team would also be merged with the streaming kingpin. 

Affleck has been a major star in Tinseltown for decades as he first gained recognition in the late 1990s for co-writing and starring in the movie “Good Will Hunting.” It was four years ago that he observed the rise of AI in film production and “could see how these models came up short.”

As a writer, director and actor, Affleck said he also recognized that it’s the human judgement that makes storytelling powerful. 

He started working with a small team and began “filming a proprietary dataset on a controlled soundstage with all the familiarities of a full production” to build a workflow that captures what happens on a set, said Affleck. 

His said that intensive research and development led to the company’s first model that understood visual logic and editorial consistency while preserving cinematic rules. Netflix plans to use InterPositive’s AI model as an in-house post-production engine designed to streamline filmmaking rather than replace human creators just like it did for roughly 300 titles that used generative AI this year, according to Variety.

“We believe new tools should expand creative freedom, not constrain it or replace the work of writers, directors, actors, and crews,” Bela Bajaria, Netflix chief content officer, said in a statement in March when the merger was announced.

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