Ron Howard Is Bullish on AI and Thinks Jim Henson Would Have Been Too
Ron Howard has gone to outer space withApollo 13, underwater withSplashand to Nockmaar withWillow. But the all-timer wouldn’t mind making another journey, this time with AI. And thinks many other directors will too. “It’s very exciting in terms of its potential to more efficiently and more broadly help storytellers get their ideas out there,” Howard…
Ron Howard has gone to outer space withApollo 13, underwater withSplashand to Nockmaar withWillow.
But the all-timer wouldn’t mind making another journey, this time with AI. And thinks many other directors will too.
“It’s very exciting in terms of its potential to more efficiently and more broadly help storytellers get their ideas out there,” Howard said of the hot-button tech. “There are so many facts yet to be sorted out,” he said, but added he thought the possibilities are very appealing and that others will agree. “We will want it.”
Howard was speaking at the Runway AI Film Festival at Lincoln Center in New York Thursday, where he talked on stage with the video-generation company’s co-founder Cris Valenzuela. That conversation followed a similar AI-themed talk from earlier this spring between Valenzuela and Kathleen Kennedy, who wasmore circumspect.
Perhaps most strikingly, Howard said that one of the most influential hand-crafted entertainers of the 20thcentury would also embrace AI if he was alive today.
“Jim Henson just wanted to be busy making [things],” said Howard, who came to know the Muppets creator well from working on the 2024 documentary about himIdea Man. “That’s what these tools make so available and why they’re so exciting.”
Ron Howard (right) appears with Runway AI CEO Chris Valenzuela at the Runway AI Film Festival in New York. The director is optimistic about the tech.
Steven Zeitchik/The Hollywood Reporter
Howard’s comments come in the wake of another iconic American director, Martin Scorsese, embracing the technology unqualifiedly on the storyboarding side, whichdrew backlash. Howard did not acknowledge that backlash or Scorsese at all. But collectively (and with the likes of James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh and others), it showed a growing filmmaker class willing to use the technology for art and worry less about unintended consequences on productions, jobs and their own analogue authenticity. That group of course has a counterweight in Guillermo del Toro, Christopher Nolan and other non-model sorts.
When asked about a backlash, Howard said, “You’re talking about change and people are worried about it. I’m worried about it, on a professional level. But again, our job is to experiment with it and learn from it and work with it,” adding, “It’s going to evolve. And audiences are going to tell us.”
TheBackdrafthelmer offered a caveat about his own bona fides. “I’m not particularly tech-savvy,” he said. “I’m not going to be that person. But when I see it [technology] and start to work with it I get very excited about it.”
The talk, and festival, happened as some Hollywood studios are starting to move more prominently into AI. Netflix and Amazon Studios have both embraced the tech as a tool to give their stable of filmmakers. And on Thursday Runway announced a deepening of its partnership with Lionsgate under the studio’s AI CEO. The deal will see the midmajor continue to build a Runway-centric model based on its own IP, develop an AI film pipeline and also invest in Runway, taking a stake in the firm (a likely small amount given that the company already has $800 million in financing and is valued at $5.3 billion).
One selling point Runway offers to studios is how the tools can enable lavish-looking productions at a fraction of the cost. Howard, though, doesn’t think the savings will materialize as much as its proponents say. “I would have thought digital filmmaking would have lowered costs more than it did.” It didn’t, he said, because “audience expectations for a movie should look and feel like can rise, and meeting those expectations can be very expensive.”
But that bean-counter tool was not the point of AI, he said — more important, as he sees it, is the new art and artists it could give rise to.
When Valenzuela asked him what he thought AI tools will yield on the filmmaking front. Howard’s answer was succinct: “A new aesthetic.”
