Ex-UTA Agent Dante DeSario Launches Collage to Bridge AI Studios and Hollywood

Collage, a new management and investment company founded in July by former UTA agent Dante DeSario and media investor Michael Lambert, has completed a seed funding round backed by investors including Black Bear, Fundamental Films, AGC Studios and producers Roy Lee, Marty Bowen and Todd Lieberman. The amount of the round was not disclosed.

The Beverly Hills-based firm currently employs five full-time staff and roughly a dozen part-timers. Lambert left UTA's independent film group in March.

What does Collage actually do?

Collage manages AI-first production companies and helps them move through the Hollywood system. Its initial client roster includes AI studios Asteria, Native Foreign, Obsidian and Jason Zada's Secret Level.

The firm's work covers:

• Navigating Hollywood guilds and what DeSario calls "studio bureaucrats"
• Copyright issues
• Demonstrations of the technology's capabilities
• Investment in selected companies, which DeSario declined to name

"We're here to offer the menu of things to what this new category needs," DeSario said.

On the studio side, DeSario wants to show Hollywood which AI companies are making human-led work and "who to stay away from" amid a wave of new entrants.

Where did the idea come from?

The venture traces back to February 2024, when DeSario saw an early demo of OpenAI's short-lived video generator Sora. After meeting and signing filmmakers experimenting with the tool, and watching them build AI-focused production companies, he saw a gap.

DeSario said his firm could "support these artists in a way that they needed help in various degrees" while helping "Hollywood navigate this, frankly, incredibly sensitive time over AI."

Collage launches into an industry still divided over AI's impact on jobs, so-called slop content and creativity. DeSario positions the company as "infrastructure" — a bridge among stakeholders that allows more stories to be told while encouraging acceptance of the technology.

Is AI filmmaking real craft?

DeSario, who describes his background in independent film, rejects the idea that AI production is automated button-pushing.

"I'm an independent film guy," he said. "I just want to help filmmakers get their projects made. That was my whole intention, and realizing that this is something that is unlike what a lot of people think. There's a lot of fallacy. It's not pushing a button. There's real craft and real differentiation between those who can have taste and want to tell stories and helping them get out there."

He argues legacy studios should welcome the new AI companies as collaborators: "The legacy system should be inviting them because they're incredible craftspeople to work with all of the various people who are already working on films."

What is the end goal?

DeSario's benchmark is a "Toy Story" moment — a breakthrough AI-developed film that connects with general moviegoers the way Pixar's 1995 feature redefined animation.

"I've personally seen work that has made me feel something," he said. "You want to feel something. I've had that experience. I think a lot of people haven't had that experience, and because it's hard to feel something when there's so much fear in the air. I want to help show the general audiences and help facilitate what I've seen to everyone else because it's pretty potent."

With Sora already shelved and guild tensions unresolved, Collage's seed-funded bridge will be tested by whether it can deliver that first mainstream AI film — and by whether studios, filmmakers and audiences decide to cross it.