After helming Studiocanal and co-founding Ubisoft‘s film and TV division, Didier Lupfer has joined forces with former TF1 head Édouard Boccon-Gibod and tech entrepreneur Tariq Krim to launch The Media Company, a production outfit that’s tapping into artificial intelligence.
Over at The Media Company, every film and TV project will be developed and produced using a variety of AI tools which Lupfer, Boccon-Gibod and Krim said will help creative teams develop the scripts efficiently, fast-track production thanks to previsualization and optimize budgets. Krim, who launched AI Netvibes, Jolicloud and Dissident AI), said the banner will be using a wide range of sophisticated AI softwares.
The Media Company’s first project in development is “Jules Verne contre Nemo,” a 1882-set detective thriller based on a bestseller by Céline Ghys and penned by Victoria Musiedlak and Julien Despaux (“Paris Police 1910”). The latter will also direct. The outfit is also developing a mainstream comedy, La Fille du Terrassier, written by Guillaume Clicquot and directed by Olivier Baroux whose filmmaking credits include “Les Tuche,” one the highest grossing French comedy franchises in recent history.
On “Jules Verne contre Nemo,” for instance, Lupfer said AI is being used very early in the process. “After optioning the book, our creative AI experts started generating proposals based on the text, and that included visualizing characters, the articulation between them, and the visual universes of different locations described in the book, such as the train station, canals and streets in Amiens, and Verne’s residence,” said Lupfer. “Every time it gives you new ideas and makes it very easy to produce 2D and 3D scenery.”
The AI will facilitate a “creative ping-pong, a brainstorming,” Krim explains. “The feedback between what the image synthesis and our thoughts allows us to go quite quickly or much further in the way we develop the script and the first part of the film.”
Krim points out that a large variety of generative AI tools are already available today but are often used to produce bland work. “The question is how we use them to continue to make art and to make creative things and not just products,” he says. As such, the company’s task will be “detect the talents of people who know how to use the tools and who have not only technical competence but also taste and a desire to use these tools to do something other than generic things,” Krim said.
Lupfer, who notably produced “Assassin’s Creed” and the toon TV franchise “Raving Rabbids” while at Ubisoft,” argues that “European cinema has the opportunity to use AI to distinguish itself from American productions.” He says that while “the film industry is still based on artisanal processes, we at The Media Company are part of a new generation of producers who use the latest tools: forecasts, budget optimization and creative AI agents.” Ultimately, the idea behind the banner, Lupfer says, is to build a “new film dynamic in Europe capable of attracting investment and producing works of international stature.”
Boccon-Gibod brings a wealth of expertise and relationships in the industry and beyond. Throughout his career, he served as head of EuropaCorp USA, worked at Christie’s France, served as chairman and CEO of Publications Metro France and executive chairman of TF1 Production.
Along with speeding up the development process, the AI is also helping The Media Company make “casting hypothesis with well-known actors and test whether it works or not,” says Boccon-Gibod. “There is a fairly widespread view that AI is against creators and is destroying jobs, and our bet is to prove the opposite. We think that it will help to produce more films.”
