IMAX to AI: A new film frontier
From volcanic islands to virtual studios: Herzog goes off-grid, Nolan goes full-screen(s), and Synthesia scales up.
Hi everyone —
Happy Monday.
Try our updated Clean Up & Scripted mode; it got released over the weekend in beta.
It’s meant for linear recordings.
Imagine you’re making a talking-head video for YouTube or a vlog or want a clean interview to scrub through.
Clean Up & Scripted mode is for you. You don’t need to have a script. But if you have one or an outline, drop it in.
Eddie will go through the recording, clean it up, create a coherent edit. Where there are multiple takes, Eddie will identify the best take.
And now…Eddie has robust text-based editing. So you can quickly see and enable the alt takes. Move bites around. And as usual, export seamlessly to Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve and Final Cut Pro.
Let me know what you think.
Onto this week’s newsletter.
Enjoy!
Shamir
Werner Herzog is dragging 50 filmmakers to a volcanic island to make movies.
Christopher Nolan announces he’ll blockade every IMAX screen on Earth for his upcoming Odyssey. And AI Startup Synthesia Hits $4 billion Valuation to put AI avatars in your office training videos.
It’s filmmaking split three ways. The human, the monumental, and the mechanical.
Hollywood, meanwhile, keeps reshuffling the chessboard: Netflix circling Warner Bros., Paramount gutting staff, YouTube reorganising around AI. Even horror got an upgrade, Blumhouse now wants to live inside your headset.
Render Reel
Bloody Disgusting Launches $35K Horror Short Contest
To celebrate its 25th anniversary, Bloody Disgusting and Screambox are inviting filmmakers to pitch a 40-minute horror short centered on their mascot, Buzzkill. The winning concept will receive a $35K production budget, professional SFX support, and a premiere slot in the 2026 season of Bloody Bites. Pitches are open until November 20, 2025 Submit your pitch here
Quentin Tarantino Expands His Film Universe into 10 Books Turning his filmography into a literary canon, starting with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Amazon Begins Crackdown on Side-Loaded Fire TV Stick Apps in Piracy Blitz From Oct 31 2025, Amazon started blocking unofficial apps on its Fire TV Sticks worldwide, working with anti-piracy coalition ACE to clamp down on devices offering illicit streams.
Blumhouse Reinvents Fear for the Headset Age Nexus Studios’ Enhanced Cinema project merges M3GAN and The Black Phone with mixed-reality effects that break the frame and pull the horror into your space.
YouTube Launches AI Upscaling + Shopping Tools for TV Screens YouTube is rolling out automatic AI upscaling for low-res uploads (with opt-out available), new 4K thumbnail limits, and QR-code shopping integration for tagged products while viewers use TV.
Synthesia Hits $4B Valuation
London-based AI video startup Synthesia just closed a $200 million round led by GV (Alphabet’s venture arm), nearly doubling its valuation to $4 billion.
Synthesia’s pitch is corporate pragmatism as its avatars help companies like DuPont, Xerox, and Spirit Airlines translate training manuals and safety briefings into talking-head videos in more than 100 languages. Think less Sora dreamscapes, more enterprise communications scaled to global workforces.
The company now boasts $100 million in annual revenue, putting it toe-to-toe with upstarts like HeyGen and giants like Adobe, which reportedly considered buying Synthesia for $3 billion earlier this year.
The deal never materialized, but the intent says everything: traditional software is chasing AI-native platforms like never before.
CEO Victor Riparbelli remains clear on Synthesia’s positioning: no surreal prompt-fests, no AI hallucinations, just synthetic humans for business content. That said, marketing and ad integrations are on the horizon, and TikTok creators are already experimenting with Synthesia avatars as low-budget spokespeople.
Video
China’s $6.9B Micro-Drama Boom Turns COVID Hotels into Vertical Soap Opera Factories The industry has pulled in $6.9 billion in 2024, surpassing China’s box office, with over 50% of the nation’s internet users now hooked on these “soap operas for the subway.”
YouTube Offers Voluntary Buy-Outs Amid AI-Driven Reorg YouTube is rolling out voluntary severance offers to U.S. employees as it restructures its product teams to double down on artificial intelligence..
Christopher Nolan’s IMAX Odyssey
Christopher Nolan’s upcoming epic The Odyssey will take over every IMAX screen on Earth for an entire month next summer: an unprecedented power move to dominate the box office.
Coming off Oppenheimer’s near-$1 billion haul, it’s less a marketing stunt than a declaration: theatrical spectacle still has teeth. For Nolan, it’s as much about film stock and format loyalty as it is about staking territory.
He’s spent two decades preaching the gospel of celluloid and IMAX, but Oppenheimer proved something even bigger that there are few filmmakers who can pull blockbuster numbers from non-franchise IP spectacles.
I say a “few” but the truth is, no one else can. And Universal knows it.
This feels like a watershed moment for Hollywood.
Shooting a movie this way eventizes the release. It tells audiences: this isn’t something you can scroll past. And that’s going to drive huge numbers for The Odyssey.
Herzog takes filmmakers to the Edge
Werner Herzog has filmed volcanoes, jungles, and war zones but next January he’ll take 50 filmmakers to the Azores for an 11-day workshop that blurs expedition and production.
Each participant will pair up to conceive, shoot, and edit a short film under Herzog’s mentorship, moving from idea to premiere in less than two weeks.
Every day is structured like a miniature production cycle: scouting volcanic landscapes by morning, story conferences and fieldwork by afternoon, screenings and open dialogues with Herzog by night.
Editing begins mid-week, and by Day 11 the finished films screen publicly before the festival crowd at Teatro Micaelense.
The program doubles as an incubator; AGENCIA FREAK will design festival routes for standout shorts, while the Azorean International Film Festival runs parallel, hosting Herzog as jury president and master-class mentor.
Experiencia WH 2026 offers a full-scale creative crucible testing whether cinema can still be immediate. For those who crave danger in their process, Herzog just mapped the coordinates.
Full tuition runs €8,800 so it’s not cheap, but compared to film school prices, studying under Herzog himself almost feels like a bargain.
AI
OpenAI Rolls Out Pay-Per-Video Monetisation for Sora 2 Sora’s text-to-video tool now includes paid tiers, letting users buy extra generations beyond the daily free cap.
AI-Generated Sitcom Clip Goes Viral: “It’s Actually Unsettling to Watch” A Friends-style parody built entirely with AI actors and laugh-tracks blew up online this week, sparking a wave of both fascination and unease.
Sony Launches Video-Compatible Camera Authenticity Solution Sony unveiled a C2PA-standard “authenticity chip” that embeds cryptographic proof of origin in both stills and video. Designed to combat deepfakes, it verifies that footage was genuinely shot in-camera.
Cut of the Week: Reels falling out from Phone // VFX Short
A conceptual VFX short from creator ShortPants. The premise: he sits down for “just five minutes” on his phone. Three hours later, film strips pour across the floor, each frame a frozen scroll from his screen.
It’s a gag built from editing discipline: flawless compositing, physical lighting synced with VFX, and the kind of pacing that sells the absurdity without saying a word.
What makes it brilliant is the metaphor hiding in plain sight. He turns a universal digital habit into an analog nightmare.
You can watch the BTS: Here
Money Moves
Netflix Eyes Bid for Warner Bros. Discovery
Netflix has reportedly hired Moelis & Co. to explore a $50 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery’s entertainment assets, including HBO and Warner Bros. Pictures.Chainsaw Man: The Movie – Reze Arc topped U.S. box office with ≈$17 million, marking another anime-driven win in what’s otherwise the weakest October for theaters in nearly three decades.
Paramount Skydance Begins 2,000 Layoffs Post-Merger
Paramount streamline operations after their summer merger. One of Hollywood’s largest layoffs since Disney 2023.
Retail Therapy
DJI Launches Neo 2 Drone in China - $1700
A compact FPV-style drone aimed at both hobbyists and creators. The updated model features 4K/60fps video capture, a redesigned three-axis gimbal, and enhanced low-light performance. Battery life has been extended to around 40 minutes, and new onboard sensors improve obstacle avoidance in tight spaces.
Currently available only in China.
Nékojita FuF: Tiny Cat Robot : $28.70
Japanese startup Yukai Engineering has unveiled a pocket-sized cat robot designed to cool your food and drinks by gently blowing on them, literally. The silicone-bodied gadget clips onto mugs or bowls and uses “FuRhythm” AI patterns to mimic natural breathing, cooling boiling drinks from 190°F to 160°F in just three minutes.
Rechargeable, washable, and of course absurd. A perfect mix of Japanese whimsy and practicality.
P.S
This week we’re digging Machine Cinema A forward-looking Substack about creativity in the age of AI. A space where filmmakers, technologists, and artists explore what happens when machines join the creative process.
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