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A new startup pledges to give authors an easier way to bring their books to life for the screen. It, naturally, involves AI.
Authors First, founded by private equity veteran Robert Hamwee, promises to let science-fiction
and fantasy scribes adapt their titles as closely to their intended vision as possible. The company uses a combination of AI generators like Seedance 2.5 and Nano Banana and “other technology,” including visual effects platforms such as Blender, to help craft the adaptations without the budget considerations traditionally associated with such work that could impede them at Hollywood studios.
The company launches after a more than $10 million seed funding round that includes Hamwee himself, the venture capital firm Brand Foundry and investors including The Family Office of David Blitzer, Andy Mills, Mike Duggal and John Kline. Hamwee leads the company as CEO, and his leadership team includes veterans of Hulu, Warner Bros. and Universal.
“As a lifelong fan of historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy epics, I’ve always believed the definitive version of any story is in the author’s imagination,” Hamwee said in a statement. “We built Authors First to give them full creative control and modern tools so production budgets no longer dictate what’s possible on screen. For readers and fans, there’s nothing better than seeing a beloved world brought to life exactly as the author intended – without compromise.”
The studio‘s first project is “Genghis: Birth of an Empire,” an adaptation of British author Conn Iggulden’s 2007 book focused on Genghis Khan, “Wolf of the Plains.” The production team included a mixture of roughly 25 humans that the company says worked on the story, camera angles and character dialogue — though the project itself was mostly generated by AI.
According to Iggulden, the movie would never have been adapted without the use of AI, as the offers he received to adapt the book fizzled due to the budget needed for a historical epic.
“It would have taken significant capital and years of filming on location across thousands of miles of remote Mongolian landscape,” he said in a statement. “Readers finally get to experience history’s greatest rags-to-riches story exactly as I’d always envisioned it: uncompromised, epic, and true to the written word.”
The studio’s debut comes amid a boom in companies eager to capitalize on the AI boom with book adaptations. Utopai Studios is adapting “Not Another Teen Movie” screenwriter Mike Bender’s children’s book “The Most Serious Fart” and the Chinese literary classic “Journey to the West”with the help of AI, while the AI animation studio Intelligent Animation is adapting “The Dragon Prince’s Bride” for the microseries platform aTwist.
Watch the trailer for “Genghis: Birth of an Empire” below:
