Ben Affleck is selling a story. In a video Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) released (1) alongside its March 5 acquisition announcement, the Oscar-winning actor described his three-year-old AI startup, InterPositive, as a way to “take out all the logistical, difficult, technical stuff that often gets in the way” of filmmaking — wire removal, reframed shots, relit scenes, enhanced backgrounds.
“You’re given more choice, you’re given more opportunity, you’re getting more episodes of your favorite shows,” Affleck said. “You’re getting more human work.”
The pitch helped justify a transaction that Bloomberg later reported (2) could be worth as much as $600 million in cash and performance-tied earnouts, making it one of Netflix’s largest acquisitions ever — second only to the streamer’s roughly $700 million purchase of the Roald Dahl Story Company (3) in 2021. The entire 16-person InterPositive team, originally backed by RedBird Capital Partners, is folding into Netflix; Affleck stays on as a senior adviser.
But on April 10, Jason Fisher — a former head of production at Disney+, Paramount TV and AMC Networks (4) who now runs the production consultancy Stage Runner (5) — published a TikTok (6) arguing that what Affleck didn’t say matters more than what he did.
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Roll camera, cue the patent
Affleck filed the underlying application in November 2024 under his legal name, Benjamin Géza Affleck-Boldt. The granted patent — ”Integration of video language models with AI for filmmaking” (7) — describes a system trained on a production’s own dailies, the raw daily footage that’s long been one of the most underused datasets in Hollywood.
Deadline’s Dade Hayes obtained and reviewed the application (8), reporting that it projects “substantial” savings on below-the-line costs, “conservatively reaching at least 10% to 20%.” Below-the-line is the industry’s term for everything that isn’t writers, directors, producers, or on-screen talent: grip, lighting, art department, set dressing, background actors, locations, and the global visual-effects houses that have powered modern moviemaking since Jurassic Park.
Per Deadline’s reading of the filing, the cost of visual effects would drop about 50%. Background actors and stand-ins, 70%. Set dressing, 40%. Art department, 30%. Additional production units outside the main location, 40%. The patent itemizes a hypothetical $32.1 million below-the-line budget and claims InterPositive could shave $7 million off it.
Before he went public with InterPositive, Affleck spoke at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference in November 2024 (9), saying AI would “disintermediate the more laborious, less creative and more costly aspects of filmmaking.”
“I wouldn’t like to be in the visual effects business,” he said. “They’re in trouble.”
The bottom line
Netflix has guided investors toward roughly $18 billion in annual cash content spend (10), a number that has fueled successive streaming-price hikes. A 20% cut across that slate is north of $3.5 billion a year. The patent explicitly says “AI service providers can generate substantial revenue by charging a fraction of the cost savings as their fee.”
Netflix executives clearly believe in AI’s potential. Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria told Affleck on camera that “for me, it’s not really about cheaper, it’s really about better.” And last summer, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos called AI “an incredible opportunity to help creators make films and series better, not just cheaper.” Director David Fincher has already used the tools on an upcoming Brad Pitt film (2), Bloomberg reported.
Stage Runner’s Fisher calls the emerging template a “gray stage” workflow: actors performing on a stripped-down soundstage while AI inserts the backgrounds, extras and lighting in postproduction. SAG-AFTRA’s newly reached four-year deal with the studios (11), announced May 2, includes fresh guardrails against synthetic performers. But the union’s protections cover unionized actors — and not the more than two million-plus workers who do rotoscoping, compositing and VFX (12), the real target of InterPositive’s patent.
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Netflix (1); Bloomberg (2); Variety (3), (10); Deadline (4), (8); Stagerunner (5); TikTok (6); Google (7); CNBC (9); The Hollywood Reporter (11); Rest of World (12)
This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Ben Affleck says the AI company he just sold to Netflix for $600 million will lead to ‘more human work’
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