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Vincent Maraval, the veteran CEO of major French sales-production company Goodfellas, spoke about the effects of AI in the industry while taking part in San Sebastián’s fifth edition of ots Creative Investors’ Conference,
co-organized with CAA Media Finance. Asked by CAA’s Roeg Sutherland how the new technology is changing his processes, Maraval cited how AI cut eight days of production on a major scene of “The Third Hand,” the latest film by Oscar-winning “The Artist” director Michel Hazanavicius.
Goodfellas recently launched sales at TIFF on the latest by Hazanavicius, which just wrapped production. The film follows a young French soldier wounded in battle in WWI, who then wakes up in the laboratory of a mad scientist who grafted a German hand onto his abdomen. The cast features Bérénice Bejo, Rebecca Marder and François Civil.
“[The film] starts on the battlefield in the First World War,” said Maraval. “Without AI, it’s ten days of shooting. With it, it’s two days.” When confronted by Sutherland about the loss of jobs this shrinkage might have caused, the exec affirmed “it’s the director’s choice,” and said new technology is making it possible for filmmakers to tell stories they wouldn’t otherwise have access to telling. The Frenchman brought up Oscar-winning animated film “Flow” as an example, saying director Gints Zilbalodis animated the film on his computer, and “without the software, that would have been impossible for him to tell that story.”
“If we use AI to open our creativity and imagination, it will help,” added Maraval, saying the technology might also make films “more profitable.”
On the subject of profitability, the French exec said the industry is currently more reliant on private equity than the older model of securing pre-sales. “More and more films are financed by private equity,” he said. “So we try to do a mix of pre-sales and some equity for countries which are difficult to sell.” Maraval also said they used to fully fund films from pre-sales at Goodfellas, but they don’t do that anymore, as it’s not only very “complicated” to do so in the current landscape, but there is also “more money from outside people who want to invest in cinema.”
Commenting on the healthy U.S. box office for 2026, Maraval said: “There is money in cinema, there is an economy, there is a dynamic, and our job is trying to combine these dynamics to find the solutions.”
Another major market change is the focus on localized markets. Maraval spoke about the fact that local market share has increased exponentially in the last year, with audiences eager to consume films made by local filmmakers, in their local language, and that reflect burning issues in their countries. The exec emphasized how Goodfellas is currently doubling down on international talent, recently having worked with several Spanish filmmakers, including “La Bola Negra” mavericks Los Javis.
Maraval decided to invest in the film after hearing from long-time collaborators at both San Sebastián and Movistar Plus about the Spanish duo. This, he said, speaks to a personal shift for him: delegating more, listening to his team more, and letting the younger generation at Goodfellas inform him about up-and-coming talent and trends. “I was totally auteur-driven, but I learned different things from my film. Being auteur-driven was easy. When you do Kore-eda, Mungiu, Dardennes, it’s very easy to do estimates,” he noted, before adding that Goodfellas became involved in Genki Kawamura’s “Exit 8” after a member of his team alerted him of the potential of the video game adaptation. “Without this new generation in the office, I’d have missed that film.”
Speaking about the current state of the industry and what might loom in the near future, Maraval said: “Every news we have is depressing.” “In France, we are on the verge of having an extreme right-wing [government]. We already have city halls cutting all the cultural subsidies. If we look at that, we can freak out, but we go somewhere else.”
“The beauty of cinema is that it takes place in the whole world,” he added. “This year, we haven’t done one French film. We’ve done many Spanish films. We go somewhere else, and that will push us to discover new talent. The rest of the world is depressing, and it’s scary to see. But local cinema in each country is becoming more powerful; people don’t want to see foreign films anymore, and that’s part of this political climate. We know we are in the business of exception, and the rest is depressing.”
