Netflix, Google and the Film Schools Betting on AI Screenwriting

Roughly 300 Netflix programs have used generative AI in production this year, while Google has invested in A24 to build AI tools for filmmakers. Four years after ChatGPT's public release, generative AI has moved from experiment to infrastructure across Hollywood writing rooms and film schools.

Justin Trevor Winters, a screenwriter and professor at Loyola Marymount University, tested the technology early. In fall 2022 he uploaded his own screenwriting lectures to guide a large language model while pitching a reimagined "Popeye the Sailor Man," set in 1930s Prohibition-era Florida through the eyes of Olive Oyl, a second-generation Afro-Cuban. He landed his logline within an hour; the project sold within weeks. He shared the method with his students immediately.

"It wasn't like, all of a sudden, the students became amazing screenwriters," Winters said. "But what I found was there were stronger concepts and stronger loglines because of it, and my students were excited about the results."

Less than a year later, Winters stood on the SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America picket lines during Hollywood's dual strikes, surrounded by signs blaming AI for job losses and creative destruction. His students were caught in between.

"They were like, 'We don't understand. Now the industry is telling us we can't use it,'" he said.

Who admits to using AI?

Dara Resnik — a writer on "Pushing Daisies," "Castle," "Jane the Virgin" and "Daredevil" who teaches at the USC School of Cinematic Arts — published a Substack essay this year titled "Everyone Is Lying: Including Me," confessing that she "quietly and effectively" uses AI.

"The uncomfortable reality is that usage is pervasive, and most people know it and are scared to name it. It's time to name it," she wrote. "A lot of people eviscerated me for that Substack," she told The Times, adding that many others applauded.

Resnik sets boundaries: no AI on work she is hired to produce, but she will use it to ideate medical scenarios she later checks with physicians, or to brainstorm at 1 a.m. "The more we don't talk about AI, the more people are going to use it unethically," she said.

How deep is the industry investment?

• Netflix bought Ben Affleck's AI company, InterPositive, earlier this year.
• The 2026 Disney Accelerator has backed five AI startups.
• Google has invested roughly $75 million in A24 — in line with prior investments by other backers — to develop AI-powered technologies.
• NYU's Martin Scorsese Virtual Production Center hosts a six-week AI for Visual Storytelling workshop; USC runs an AI for Media & Storytelling initiative.
• Winters is building a new LMU department, Creative Technology and Innovation, targeted for fall 2027.

Does AI replace craft?

Educators agree it does not. Winters, who created Curious Refuge's 54-lecture AI screenwriting course, tells students plainly: "This is 80 to 90% craft. You are basically taking a normal screenwriting course I usually teach, but I'm going to give you 10% that will be your superpower, once you've understood the craft and mastered it."

He also uses Midjourney to build pitch decks, placing an envisioned actor in exact 1920s wardrobe and locations — and saw his students' deck production value rise immediately.

Fred Grinstein, who teaches cinematic AI at USC and Chapman University and co-founded the AI filmmaking community Machine Cinema, goes further. After feeding Anthropic's Claude a 50-page research document and Zoom transcripts, he and his co-writer found a poignant flashback scene in the output that neither had written.

"I think a lot of people calm themselves down, saying it's just a tool," Grinstein said. "But you're not letting your imagination run wild enough by [merely] calling it a tool." He calls AI an active collaborator — and argues writers who expand across the production pipeline, understand union rules and protect their intellectual property will be "remarkably empowered."

What about beginners?

Clayton Colmon, director of curriculum design at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Arts & Sciences, warns that AI used too early flattens distinct voices into generic storytelling. "We often have an abundance of intelligence, but not as much wisdom," he said. Resnik echoes the access argument in her Substack: "Storytelling is human instinct, not a credential."

The results on Winters's own campus suggest the doors are real: one student's AI-made animated short led to multiple industry meetings and job offers, and another left the 15-week class with a short film that got him hired upon graduation.