Netflix, in one of its biggest-ever acquisitions, reportedly will pay up to $600 million for InterPositive, the AI filmmaking tools start-up founded by Ben Affleck.
Affleck and InterPositive’s investors will earn as much as $600 million from the Netflix deal if the company meets “certain performance targets,” Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources. The amount that Netflix paid upfront for InterPositive was less than that, according to the report.
Reps for Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Netflix on March 5 announced the deal to buy Affleck’s InterPositive for undisclosed financial terms. The entire 16-person InterPositive team of engineers, researchers and creatives will join Netflix through the acquisition, and Affleck will serve as a senior adviser to Netflix to provide ongoing guidance. That came a week after Netflix walked away from its deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s studios and streaming businesses, opting to not make a counteroffer after Paramount Skydance upped its hostile bid for WBD by $1/share, to a winning offer of $31/share.
Neither Netflix or Affleck have revealed who the investors in InterPositive are, aside from Affleck himself. The L.A.-based company had been in stealth mode since he founded it in 2022.
According to Affleck, the InterPositive system builds an AI model based on an existing production’s dailies, then lets a filmmaker introduce that model into the postproduction process to provide the ability to do things like mix and color, relight shots, and add visual effects.
Netflix plans to offer access to InterPositive’s tech to its creative partners but does not have plans to sell it commercially. Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer, touted InterPositive’s AI technology as being able to provide partners “more choices, more control and more protection for their vision.”
Affleck, in a statement about Netflix’s deal for InterPositive, said, “I couldn’t be happier for this work to continue with the team at Netflix, and look forward to providing the broader creative community with access to what we build and the future we’re working towards together.”
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