Runway to Grant Filmmakers up to $1 Million for AI-Powered Movies

Runway, the generative AI company that recently inked a first-of-its-kind deal with Lionsgate, will dole out grants of up to $1 million to filmmakers working on AI-powered projects.

Runway is launching The Hundred Film Fund, an initiative to help produce and fund as many as 100 short films and feature-length movies that use generative AI technology to tell their stories. The funding grants will range from $5,000 to $1 million and decisions on applications will typically be made within 14 days of submission, according to Runway. Interested filmmakers can submit applications at this link.

To evaluate pitches for the fund, Runway has assembled an advisory panel of tech and entertainment leaders. Initial advisors are: Jane Rosenthal, film producer and co-founder of Tribeca Festival; Richard Kerris, VP, GM of media and entertainment, Nvidia (which is an investor in Runway); artist, actor, producer and entrepreneur will.i.am (also a Runway investor); Stefan Sonnenfeld, an award-winning film colorist who is co-founder and president of post-production firm Company 3; and Christina Lee Storm, a creative producer who is founder and CEO of Asher XR.

What’s the catch? Runway co-founder and CEO Cris Valenzuela told Variety there isn’t one — his company is interested in only promoting AI as a new filmmaking tool, for both established and emerging creators. “This is not about getting our money back,” he said.

Runway will not have ownership rights to the intellectual property created under the program. Nor will the company distribute the finished products, but it hopes to connect participants to buyers through the panel of advisers. “We’re a software company. Our business is to sell tools,” Valenzuela said. “Our success will be rooted in our ability to help storytellers make these films.” While Runway will “strongly advocate using our tools,” it will consider film projects that use other generative AI platforms, he added.

“We believe that the best stories are yet to be told, and that traditional funding mechanisms often overlook these new visions,” Valenzuela said. The Hundred Film Fund is a “rolling fund,” meaning there’s no set total amount for what Runway expects to give out under the program.

In an interview, will.i.am, who’s the frontman of the Black Eyed Peas, said he was a user of Runway’s AI video tools before he was an investor. (He also has invested in other artificial intelligence ventures, including OpenAI, Inflection AI and Anthropic.) For Runway’s Hundred Film Fund, will.i.am said he’s looking for “folks that are breaking the mold.”

With generative AI, will.i.am said, a storyteller “has more time to develop the things you love about film — story and character development.” The technology also provides a new creative canvas for new kinds of narratives, he said: “If we’re using AI to do exactly what we did yesterday, that’s a poor use of imagination. The dreamers are going to use AI to tell stories differently.”

To those in Hollywood who have expressed skepticism — or fear — about AI’s role in the creative process, Valenzuela’s response is that people should experiment with the tools that are available. “Technology and cinema have always been intertwined,” he said. “This, for us, just represents a new evolution of that.”

Valenzuela said Runway’s Lionsgate deal — its first major deal with a Hollywood studio — is separate from the Hundred Film Fund. Last week Lionsgate announced a partnership with Runway that will let filmmakers and other creative talent “augment their work” using Runway’s tool to generate “cinematic video.” Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns said the studio expects to save “millions and millions of dollars” in production costs and that several filmmakers “are already excited about its potential applications to their pre-production and post-production process.”

The Hundred Film Fund represents a step up from Runway’s AI Film Festival, which it established in 2022 as “a celebration of the art and artists embracing new and emerging AI techniques for filmmaking.” In 2023 and 2024, the AI Film Festival solicited submissions and selected 10 finalists that were showcased at screenings in New York City and L.A. with more than $60,000 in total prizes granted to the winners. This year, Runway partnered with the Tribeca Festival for the AIFF screenings and a panel discussion in New York.

New York-based Runway, founded in 2018, has raised about $250 million in funding to date from investors including Google, Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures. The company’s last publicly reported post-money valuation was $1.5 billion.

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