Netflix Inc. is set to pay up to $600 million for InterPositive, an AI-driven moviemaking company founded by Ben Affleck, according to sources familiar with the deal, marking one of the streaming giant’s largest acquisitions to date. The actual cash payment was lower, the sources, who requested anonymity due to private terms, revealed. InterPositive’s owners stand to earn additional sums if certain performance benchmarks are achieved. Netflix, which recently made an unsuccessful bid for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. , has not publicly disclosed the agreement’s specifics. Most Read from Bloomberg - Georgia Democrat Leads in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s District - Trump Announces New Oil Refinery Supported by Reliance - Greek Oil Tanker Leaves Strait of Hormuz With Signal Off - Trump to Invoke Emergency Law for Offshore Oil Producer Sable - Trump Indicates Potential End to War, Considers Lifting Oil Sanctions Netflix’s acquisition of InterPositive aims to accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence into its filmmaking processes. The startup has developed a suite of tools enabling filmmakers to modify existing footage. Renowned director David Fincher has already utilized these tools on an upcoming film starring Brad Pitt. This deal also ranks among the largest AI investments made by a major Hollywood studio.

Industry leaders like Netflix and Amazon. com Inc. are increasingly adopting AI technologies to reduce production costs and enhance content quality. Amazon has established an internal team dedicated to implementing AI across its film and television projects, while Walt Disney Co. has partnered commercially with OpenAI. Hollywood workers express concerns that studios might employ AI to cut jobs and reduce expenses, as well as fears that technology firms could appropriate their work to train AI systems without providing compensation. Affleck designed InterPositive as a filmmaker’s tool: the software requires footage from a movie to train on, enabling it to remove unwanted elements or adjust backgrounds in scenes. It does not train on films without permission, nor does it generate new content independently without source material. Prior to its $72 billion pursuit of Warner Bros. , Netflix had generally avoided expensive mergers, preferring organic growth over acquisitions. Purchasing a startup—albeit one of Hollywood’s most significant AI transactions—could represent Netflix’s strategic move toward developing its own AI capabilities. “The filmmaking process really, since its inception, has been one long technological progression, ” Affleck stated in a video shared by Netflix. “We’ve always sought to make it feel more realistic, more honest, and InterPositive I hope is another iteration or step in keeping with that long and storied history. ”