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Why this Hollywood director thinks AI can save L.A. film jobs
In 1926, director Cecil B. DeMille hired hundreds of workers to build a set of Jerusalem inside the DeMille Studios in Culver City for the classic silent film “The King of Kings.”
A century later, Jon Erwin filmed his biblical epic ‘The Old Stories: Moses,’ starring Ben Kingsley, on the same studio lot now owned by Amazon MGM Studios.
Except now, much of the architecture, desert location, and supernatural parts of the three-episode miniseries were generated through artificial intelligence. The prequel to ‘The House of David’ series debuts on Amazon Prime on Thursday.
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A production that traditionally would have taken months to shoot and require multiple locations was filmed entirely in one week with a crew of just 100 people — who never left Los Angeles.
“We did this massive sword-and-sandal epic, and we never left a soundstage, very similar to how James Cameron does Avatar or how Jon Favreau does ‘The Mandalorian,’” said Erwin, the director of the series. “When you preserve the performance and the work of the crews and the department heads, then you can do things that are incredibly cost-effective for studios.”
As Hollywood grapples with rapid technological change, a growing number of filmmakers and companies in Southern California are using AI tools to radically rethink how films and TV shows are made.
“Some are still resisting, but many are recognizing that, for better or worse, AI is here and not going anywhere and it is important to reimagine what film creation can look like in light of the new possibilities AI creates,” said Victoria Schwartz, director of the entertainment, media, and sports law program at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law.
A screen of LED panels called “the Volume” is used to film scenes for director Jon Erwin’s series “The Old Stories: Moses.”
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Erwin is among the first working directors at a major streaming platform to fully integrate AI into a commercial production.
Last month, he launched Innovative Dream, a Manhattan Beach production services company backed by Amazon. The company will rent its virtual production facilities to other studios and develop training programs for emerging filmmakers.
Although much of Hollywood is bracing for AI to hollow out jobs, Erwin argues the opposite: that AI, applied ethically around human performances, can return at least some production jobs that have been outsourced even as other positions are eliminated.
“I think the greater threat of job loss in our industry is actually just how expensive things have gotten and how long they take to make,” Erwin said. “If you can make things quicker, and you can make things at a price point that studios will say ‘yes,’ you can employ more people in aggregate and create jobs.”
Although computer graphics have been essential to Hollywood since the 1990s, they traditionally required hundreds of artists and months of post-production work to place actors or crowds in digital worlds. Much of the labor-intensive visual effects work known as rotoscoping was outsourced to shops in India and other countries with much lower labor costs than in California.
By 2019, productions such as Disney’s “The Mandalorian” series advanced this further by using massive LED screens to project images of photorealistic digital worlds — “Star Wars” ships, forests, or deserts — as actors’ performed in costume in front of them. A virtual art department spent months designing the digital environments, and then loading them onto the large screen on the day of the shoot.
AI takes the process a step further.
Through “Moses,” Erwin is championing what he calls “hybrid” filmmaking: a workflow that marries live-action with AI-enhanced workflows in virtual production. The process combines what used to be separate phases — filming with actors and visual effects — to occur almost simultaneously. Scenes shot on set is made available to multiple editors and AI artists within minutes on the production floor, as they show near-finished sequences back to the cast and director.
“You can create assets in three or four days, not 10 weeks. And that means you can actually kind of generate the environment while you’re shooting,” he said.
Erwin, 43, grew up in Alabama and built his career around faith-based films such as ‘I Still Believe’ and ‘Jesus Revolution.’ He had spent years trying to tell biblical stories at the scale portrayed in the source material.
When he pitched “House of David,” a drama about the life of King David, studio executives were initially skeptical. “I was told to just come up with a smaller idea,” he said.
To portray Goliath’s origin story, actors were filmed on green screens and AI was used to generate a mythical sequence involving dark sky, rain, mountains and angels with wings.
It marked one of the first integrations of generative AI in a major commercial production. The series, which premiered last year was viewed by 44 million viewers worldwide and reached No. 1 on Prime Video in the U.S.
By Season 2, the team used 30 different tools, both traditional and AI, to generate images, sounds and video. They pivoted from shooting solely on location in Greece to filming some parts in L. A. in front of an LED wall.
AI was used to generate battle scenes and expand the background crowd size to thousands of people in a fraction of the time traditional CGI required. The use of AI-generated scenes jumped from 70 in Season 1 to 400 shots in the second season.
Jeff Thomas, a generative AI filmmaker who directed two episodes of Season 2, said each episode was made for less than $5 million, defying studio consensus that the show required a “Game of Thrones”-level budget of $12 million to $15 million per episode. Erwin declined to disclose the budgets for the “House of David” series or the “Moses” prequel..
“The Bible describes that battle as there was 100,000 people on each side. Well, it’s never been portrayed like that because we’ve never had the resources,” Erwin said. “We’re finally able to show that scope and scale.”
Erwin conceived of the idea of “Moses” over Christmas, wrote the script in January and created a four-minute trailer entirely created by AI. Amazon greenlighted the series later that month.
Kingsley had a short window before his next commitment, so Erwin prepared and shot all three episodes on a soundstage in a week — a project that would have previously taken six months to prepare.
For the pivotal Red Sea scene, Erwin generated the water volumes and tidal waves in less than hour using AI models from Chinese company Kling AI and Palo Alto-based Luma AI, which would have taken weeks in the traditional process. They wrote text prompts that explored 18 different variations of the sea parting and discarded the ones that didn’t work, enabling Kingsley to react to a tidal wave projected onto a 360-degree LED wall screen.
“‘Moses’ really represented a whole new method of filmmaking for me,” Erwin said.
For “The Old Stories: Moses,” director Jon Erwin used AI for wide shots, stunt-heavy battle sequences and to generate large crowds to showcase the grand scope of biblical stories. The red line he said he wouldn’t cross is using it in place of actors.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
For crucial scenes portraying the palace hallway in Egypt, where Moses talks to the Pharaoh, they built cardboard boxes as the columns in the palace, and “reskinned” them with intricate carvings using AI. Although the set could accommodate only 20 extras, they used AI to create hundreds of background actors.
Erwin also used generative AI to synthetically expand partially built sets featuring sand and rocks and to “de-age” Kingsely to appear as a young Moses.
But some things were off limits for AI, including Kingsley’s performance.
“I just think our faces are so intricate and the micro expressions are so intricate, so that’s always real,” he said.
Instead, AI was used to co-design the character: Erwin originally imagined a bald Moses, but based on Kingsley’s feedback, they fine-tuned the look with weathered hair and mustache.
“The line in the sand for me is replacing an actor,” Erwin said. “I don’t want to be in the industry if I can’t work with actors.”
Jon Erwin’s “hybrid” production involves generating a variety of environments such as forests, deserts, or battle sequences using AI, and projecting them on the LED screen.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
When asked about the background extras displaced by AI crowd generation, Erwin said that’s the wrong way to think about it.
“It’s not a comparison of what would “Moses” have cost otherwise. It’s a comparison of “Moses” would have never been made otherwise, and that’s the way you have to think about it,” he said.
Overall contraction in Hollywood has led to fewer films being shot on location in Los Angeles, and a 30% drop in entertainment industry jobs since its 2022 peak.
“I think you can do those things three to five times faster, at less than 30% the cost,” he said. “I actually see this tool set as an antidote to the job loss problem in our industry.”
The Kars4Kids jingle is back on the air in California after being ordered off the airwaves last month.
The catchy jingle that has been getting stuck in heads for nearly three decades was pulled from the air after a California man took Kars4Kids to court for false advertising.
The man said he donated an old car to the charity, believing it would be used to benefit children in need. He was unaware that Kars4Kids gives the donations to another organization, Oorah, that uses the money to fund Jewish youth trips to Israel.
The Orange County court originally ruled the jingle a violation of California’s false advertising law for failing to disclose its religious affiliations, and it was subsequently pulled from the airwaves. Kars4Kids filed an appeal, and the court has ruled the jingle can stay on the air throughout the appeals process.
“Kars4Kids applauds today’s court ruling allowing its ads to continue airing in California while the appeals process continues,” a spokesperson for Kars4Kids said. “The uninterrupted airing of its ads will enable the charity to continue funding its programs for children and families. We believe the lower court’s findings on the facts and the law were deeply flawed, and we look forward to pursuing a broad appeal of that decision.”
Kars4Kids has run into allegations of false advertising before. Oregon and Pennsylvania also took the charity to court over the misleading jingle in 2009, resulting in a $130,000 fine and a requirement to disclose its affiliations in all advertisements.
A Kars4Kids spokesperson said last month that its website clearly states its Jewish affiliation.
“We believe this case was nothing more than a lawyer-driven attempt to siphon off charitable funds for their own gain,” the spokesperson said. “The law and the facts are clearly on our side.”
The nonprofit using the funds gathered by Kars4Kids has also previously used the donations for a matchmaking program for Jewish young adults and to purchase a $16.5 million building in Israel.
While the jingle could be pulled from the air again depending on the result of the appeal, for now, it will remain a part of your morning commute in California.
Texas has dethroned California as the state with the most Fortune 500 companies.
The Fortune 500 list ranks the largest U.S. companies by revenue. This year, 57 of the top companies are headquartered in Texas, compared with California’s 56. It’s a reversal from two years ago when the Golden State had the pole position.
The Lone Star State was quick to claim the victory.
“Texas is the undisputed headquarters of headquarters,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news release responding to the ranking, which was announced Wednesday. “The world’s leading businesses invest with confidence in Texas because of our welcoming business climate, predictable regulatory environment, and skilled and growing workforce. People and businesses are choosing Texas because Texas works.”
California’s corporate haters say they try to avoid the state’s high costs, income taxes and strict regulations, but the western state is still a top money maker.
“California dominates on nearly every other measure: its Fortune 500 companies are the most profitable ($647 billion), most valuable ($20 trillion), and employ more people than any other state (2.8 million workers),” Fortune said in a news release.
Indeed, despite the naysayers, Californian companies have been leading the world in developing artificial intelligence technology as well as the latest in space and defense tech.
The state is home to nearly 400 “unicorns,” or billion-dollar startups — more than any other state, according to CB Insights. It also gobbled up nearly two-thirds of U.S. venture capital last year, with San Francisco Bay Area startups such as OpenAI leading the way, according to the business information platform Crunchbase.
Texas and California have been in a tug-of-war for the crown. In 2024, after a decade, California bagged the top spot with 57 companies on the list, while Texas and New York tied in second with 52 companies each.
Healthcare giant McKesson, and oil companies Exxon Mobil and Chevron, were the top three Texas companies on the list. Apple, Alphabet, and Nvidia took the top positions in California.
Tesla, which relocated to Austin from Palo Alto in 2021, ranked 43rd on the list. Other major Fortune 500 companies that left California included Oracle, Charles Schwab and Chevron.
California’s population exodus has yet to fully recover from the pandemic times in 2020. The state’s high cost of living and regulatory environment are often cited as reasons for residents opting to move.
More recently, California’s proposal for a one-time tax on billionaires prompted some, including Peter Thiel and Larry Page, to open new offices outside the state.
Some smaller companies are also leaving the state, but nearly the same number are being set up. From 2011 to 2021, the state lost a net 2% of its total of around 47,000 headquarters, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
“There is some indication of an uptick in headquarters leaving California, but it is really small in comparison to other firm trends,” said Sarah E. Bohn, vice president of the Public Policy Institute of California. “The rate of leaving is slightly higher among bigger firms.”
Bohn, in a recent report, cautioned that focusing solely on relocations overlooks the range of positive and negative forces driving headquarters activity and can misrepresent businesses’ desire and ability to operate headquarters in California and the broader impact on jobs.
Behind Texas and California was New York, home to 53 Fortune 500 companies this year. The fourth spot was tied between Illinois and Ohio, with 29 companies each.
Amazon was the top company on the list, ending Walmart’s 13-year reign at the top of the annual Fortune 500 companies list. Amazon’s 2025 revenue was $716.9 billion, compared with Walmart’s $713.2 billion.
Seattle-headquartered Amazon joined Exxon Mobil, General Motors, and Walmart as the only four companies to have ever held the top position since Fortune began publishing the data in 1955.
Together, the 500 companies on the list roped in $21 trillion in revenue and $2.1 trillion in profits last year, employing 30.5 million people worldwide.
Nearly 2,000 food and beverage workers at SoFi Stadium voted overwhelmingly Friday to authorize a strike just a week before the venue will stage the first World Cup game on U.S. soil in more than three decades.
Negotiations on a labor contract between Unite Here Local 11, the union representing the cooks, dishwashers, concession workers and bartenders at SoFi and, Legends Global, the stadium’s food-service operator, are expected to continue Monday despite the vote. But Kurt Petersen, the union’s co-president, said if an agreement isn’t reached workers will walk off the job and the 70,000 fans arriving for the June 12 match between the U.S. and Paraguay will be greeted by hundreds of picketers.
Union members have been working without a contract for a year and Petersen said Unite Here is demanding salary increases, protection against subcontracting and job loss through automation, and are protesting the collection of sensitive private information such as nationality and home addresses that FIFA, organizer of the World Cup, said it needs to accreditate workers.
Workers are also demanding the right to walk off the job if federal immigration enforcement enters the stadium and creates a reasonable fear for their safety. Ninety-six percent of the vote was in favor of strike authorization.
Legends Global, the stadium’s food-service operator, responded to the vote with a statement.
“Legends Global has presented progressive wage proposals to Unite Here Local 11 throughout our negotiations and remains confident an agreement is within reach,” it read. “While we expect a contract will be finalized in time, a contingency staffing plan is in place to ensure seamless operations and no disruption to fans. We remain committed to delivering an outstanding hospitality experience at the FIFA World Cup matches.”
That contingency plan would involve hiring replacement workers who would have to undergo the same detailed accreditation procedures demanded by FIFA, plus job training. SoFi Stadium is scheduled to play host to eight World Cup matches, including two of the U.S. team’s three group-stage games. The first of those is on June 12 when the U.S. faces Paraguay in its World Cup opener.
Petersen said the union is looking for “substantial increases” in hourly pay, to more than $30 an hour. Legends’ most recent proposal calls for wage freezes for some workers and a 25-cent hourly increase for cooks and dishwashers, the union said.
But perhaps the biggest sticking point is FIFA’s demand for workers’ sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers and fingerprints, to process background checks. Under California privacy laws, workers have the right to know exactly what personal information their employer collects, how it will be used, and who it will be shared with. Local 11 said its members fears such information, if collected, could be made available to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE.
According to Petersen, when workers were originally hired by Legends they submitted the documentation necessary for employment, and under the current collective bargaining agreement the company does not have the right to request it again for FIFA.
FIFA has refused to comment on the contract talks, saying they are “between Legends Global and Unite Here Local 11.” But its insistence on collecting personal information is something Legends cannot address during contract talks, which makes a resolution impossible.
FIFA said it was partnering with the governments of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, the three countries in which the 39-day tournament will be played, “to enhance safety and security of all workers, staff, team members, vendors, journalists, volunteers, and spectators by mitigating potential insider threats. … Such name checks do not constitute pre-employment checks.”
All data collected during the name-check process, FIFA said, will be processed “in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws, and will be deleted by FIFA as soon as it is no longer needed for purposes of adjudicating requests for credentialed access to FIFA-controlled spaces.
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