Netflix is acquiring Ben Affleck’s AI-powered filmmaking tool company, InterPositive, for an undisclosed sum.

In a video accompanying the company’s announcement on Thursday, Ben Affleck said InterPositive’s technology helps filmmakers to build their own, proprietary AI models based on the scenes they’ve already shot, and then use that data to help solve otherwise laborious details.

“You can use your own model to remove the wires on stunts, reframe a shot, get a shot you missed, shape the lighting, enhance the backgrounds,” said the Oscar-winning director, producer, writer and actor, who has also joined Netflix as a senior advisor.

In an email to NPR, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the main union supporting Hollywood’s technical workers, including camera operators, lighting and sound technicians, grips, script supervisors, among other industry disciplines, said it does not comment on mergers and acquisitions.

This is just the latest agreement the Oscar-winning filmmaker has struck with Netflix. Earlier this week, Affleck and Matt Damon’s production company, Artists Equity, signed a major multi-year partnership with the streamer. The agreement gives Netflix first dibs to develop and distribute all of the pair’s future streaming-focused projects. Affleck has also made and released multiple movies in collaboration with Netflix, most recently The Rip, a thriller starring Affleck and Damon as Miami narcotics officers who find a secret hoard of drug money.

Despite his tech interests, Affleck has expressed a desire to keep humans at the center of the creative process. He is among the hundreds of Hollywood insiders to sign on to the Creators Coalition on AI. The group, established late last year, describes itself on its website as “a central hub for cross-industry discussions about how AI is impacting the entertainment industry.”

“This is not a full rejection of AI,” the group stated. “The technology is here. This is a commitment to responsible, human-centered innovation.”

“The InterPositive team is joining Netflix because of our shared belief that innovation should empower storytellers, not replace them,” said Elizabeth Stone, Netflix’s chief product and technology officer, in a press release. She said the partnership would “continue building towards a future of entertainment where technology plays a part in how stories are made, but people — and their ideas, craft and judgment — remain at the core of great storytelling.”

The deal between InterPositive and Netflix comes just over a week since the streamer pulled out of its plan to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. Paramount agreed to acquire the media giant in a deal valued at around $110 billion. On Feb. 26, the Warner Brothers Discovery board declared Paramount’s bid to be “superior” to an $83 billion deal it had previously struck with Netflix.

Kimberly A. Owczarski, an associate professor at Texas Christian University who studies media franchises, told NPR in an email that Netflix’s decision to partner with a filmmaker of Affleck’s prominence sends out a positive message to an industry reeling from the threats posed by the growing adoption of AI across the entertainment landscape.

“His status in the industry as a star, filmmaker, and producer gives substantial weight as he promotes a responsible use of AI in filmmaking,” Owczarski said.

Jennifer Vanasco edited this story.

Hailey Bieber
These Luscious Lips Don’t Lie … I’m Freaking Hot!!!

Published
March 6, 2026
5:58 PM PST

We’re long past the days when the Pixar brand was a reliable indicator of quality, when every other year or so would bring a new masterwork on the level of The Incredibles, Ratatouille and WALL-E. In recent years, the Disney-owned animation studio has succumbed to sequelitis; I didn’t much care for Inside Out 2 or the Toy Story spinoff Lightyear, and even ostensible originals like Soul and Elemental have felt like high-concept disappointments.

So it’s a relief as well as a pleasure to recommend Pixar’s wildly entertaining new movie, Hoppers, without reservation. Directed by Daniel Chong from a script by Jesse Andrews, this eco-themed sci-fi farce may not be vintage or all-time-great Pixar. But its unhinged comic delirium is by far the liveliest thing to emerge from the company in years.

The movie stars Piper Curda as the voice of Mabel Tanaka, a plucky 19-year-old college misfit and environmental activist who lives in the woodsy suburban town of Beaverton. Mabel is more of an animal lover than a people person. She inherited a love of nature from her late grandmother, and she wants nothing more than to protect her favorite place, a forest glade.

The town’s popular mayor, Jerry — amusingly voiced by Jon Hamm — is trying to ram a highway through the area. But to Mabel’s alarm, the busy beavers who made the glade a haven for local wildlife have inexplicably vanished, and they seem to have taken all the other forest critters with them.

While investigating this disturbing situation, Mabel stumbles on a high-tech experiment that’s being conducted by her biology professor, Dr. Sam, voiced by Kathy Najimy. Dr. Sam calls the program Hoppers, because it allows a single human mind to enter, or “hop,” into the body of a robot animal, which can then pass itself off as an actual animal and communicate with real creatures in the wild.

Against Dr. Sam’s wishes, Mabel hops into the robot beaver and makes her way deep into the forest, where she hopes to convince a real beaver to return to the glade — and bring all the other animals back with it.

What Mabel discovers in the forest, though, is not at all what she expected. She encounters a community that includes birds, bunnies, racoons, a very grumpy bear and, of course, other beavers, including the friendly, somewhat naïve beaver king, George, endearingly voiced by Bobby Moynihan. (The movie takes the idea of the animal kingdom quite literally; the enormous vocal ensemble includes the late Isiah Whitlock Jr. as a royal goose, and Meryl Streep as the most imperious monarch butterfly imaginable.)

Mabel Tanaka (voiced by Piper Curda) is a plucky 19-year-old college misfit and environmental activist.

Disney/Pixar

hide caption

toggle caption

Disney/Pixar

Advertisement

George has no idea that Mabel isn’t a real beaver, and he quickly takes a liking to her, even though her efforts to learn why the animals left the glade have a way of getting her and everyone into hot water.

None of this may sound too odd, especially coming just a few months after Zootopia 2. But Hoppers is just getting started; the movie gets funnier, stranger, and more surreal as it goes along. The mind-bending, body-swapping premise has obvious shades of Avatar, which Andrews’ script knowingly shouts out early on.

There are also references to classic horror films like The Birds and Jaws, and for good reason. Hoppers asks the question: What would happen if animals were fully aware of what humans have done to the planet — and suddenly in a position to do something about it? In the final stretch, the film almost becomes a body-snatcher movie, with a level of creepiness that may scare the youngest in the audience, though my 9-year-old laughed far more than she screamed.

I laughed a lot, too; Hoppers is full of funny throwaway lines and oddball non-sequiturs that I expect I’ll hear a hundred more times when it finally makes its way into our streaming rotation. The movie occasionally flirts with darkness, but even Pixar’s daring can only go so far, and its environmental advocacy ultimately lands on an unobjectionable message about how humans and animals can coexist.

That may sound conventional, but it’s borne out beautifully by Mabel and George’s unlikely friendship, which happily continues even after Mabel is no longer a beaver. There’s something fitting about that: for Pixar, Hoppers is nothing short of a return to form.