Promise Studios Highlight ‘NinjaPunk’ & ‘Extinction’ At Cannes

Promise Studios Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Dave Clark hit the Cote D’Azur and showed glimpses of film projects NinjaPunk and Extinction as part of the Cannes Market’s deep focus on AI. The generative AI studio boss also talked about how Promise sees AI meshing with traditional filmmaking.

“I don’t personally forsee generative AI coming in and taking over the entire production process, there’s always going to have to be a human involved creatively,” he said at an invite-only AI event held at the Plages Des Palmes beach-front venue in Cannes.

Promise launched last year with backing from Peter Chernin’s The North Road Company and VC outfit Andreessen Horowitz. It is run by George Strompolos, former CEO of Fullscreen, former YouTube content executive Jamie Byrne, and Clark.

“I was one of the early ones, experimenting, putting stuff out there, getting a lot of hate, a lot of fear, a lot of misunderstanding of what I was actually trying to do,” Clark said. “Fast forward to today, and people are really starting to understand how [generative AI] is actually just a tool that any filmmaker can use. And I want to be clear, you don’t have to use it, just like people don’t have to use CGI, you don’t have to use VFX.”

‘NinjaPunk’ & ‘Extinction’

The Cannes crowd got a look at Promise’s live-action and generative AI film NinjaPunk, and a new project, Extinction. NinjaPunk follows a cybernetic ninja in a neon-lit 2065 Los Angeles. He is hellbent on revenge against the Yakuza who killed his wife.

Clark, who directs, said that once production gets underway, there is a hybrid approach. “We still put together crews, we still work with artists,” he said. “A lot of people are involved, everyone from stunt choreographers – we worked with the stunt team that worked on John Wick and did all the fight choreography – we worked with VFX and CG artists, modelers, editors, and cinematographers.”

Gen-AI director Guillaume Hurbault was on hand to show the trailer for his project for Promise, Extinction. The story follows a hunter from a Neanderthal tribe on a quest for revenge.

“When you work with AI, it’s about the time and effort you put into it,” Hurbault said. “If you want to get good images, if you want to get consistent characters, if you want to keep the lighting et cetera, that’s a process that takes a lot more time than people expect. To create the pitch deck [for Extinction], which included the mood board images, it took me about a week. It’s not done in one hour.”

The AI event was an all-dayer at Cannes. It was part of Cannes Next, the Marché du Film’s long-running innovation strand and, in turn, part of the wider Cannes market. This year the Marché organizers have leaned even more heavily into tech and with a new 1,000 meter-square space dubbed Village Innovation.