Ron Howard says audiences will decide if AI-generated films succeed
Oscar-winning director Ron Howard told a New York audience on Thursday that AI-generated films could find a place in multiplexes — but only if audiences decide they want to watch them.
TL;DR
- Howard spoke at Runway AI’s fourth annual festival at Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center, New York on 12 June 2026.
- He acknowledged AI is “democratising” filmmaking but said he has not yet seen real efficiency gains in his own productions.
- Directors including Martin Scorsese and Steven Soderbergh have embraced the tech; Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan have urged caution.
- Howard’s Imagine Entertainment inked an AI production deal with Obsidian Studio in November 2025.
Howard puts audiences in the driving seat
Ron Howard, speaking at the Runway AI Festival at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, said the technology has been “democratising” the filmmaking process, allowing storytellers to tell their stories “more efficiently, more broadly.”
But he placed the ultimate power elsewhere. “It’s going to be, again, up to the audiences to determine what appeals, what resonates,” Howard told the crowd of several hundred attendees.
He pressed the point further. “It’s going to ultimately be determined by us. What’s worth our time? What are we invested in? Do we care about knowing the alive actors on screen and connecting with them for that reason — or are we also fully willing to invest in characters that are synthetic? I think the answer is, we don’t really know, but I expect there’s room for all of it,” Howard said.
Runway’s growing clout in Hollywood
The 2026 festival, Runway’s fourth annual edition, was held at Alice Tully Hall in New York on 11 June, with an LA edition set for the Broad Stage Theater on 18 June.
The Grand Prix prize this year stands at $50,000 in cash plus one million Runway credits — a significant step up from previous editions.
Runway, the New York-based AI tools company, has been actively courting Hollywood, signing formal deals with AMC Networks and Lionsgate.
Imagine Entertainment’s AI bet
Howard’s remarks carry extra weight given his own company’s moves in the space. In November 2025, Obsidian Studio announced a creative partnership with Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment, with a goal of blending live-action film projects with AI-powered digital production.
Obsidian co-founders Wes Walker and Louis Gheysens said they will produce several long-form projects, including a feature film, for Imagine and in direct partnership with Howard.
Still, Howard admitted the promised efficiencies have not materialised for him personally. “It seemed it’s going to create a lot of efficiencies, but so far I can’t say that I’ve seen it yet in my world,” he said.
Where other big directors stand
Howard is not alone in carefully threading the needle on AI. Martin Scorsese recently joined German AI startup Black Forest Labs as an adviser, saying the technology could make storyboarding more efficient, while Steven Soderbergh has repeatedly championed his own use of generative AI across recent projects.
By contrast, Steven Spielberg and Christopher Nolan have taken a more cautious line. Both have said AI should be a limited “tool” as part of the broader filmmaking process, with Spielberg saying on a podcast last month that AI would not be “the final word” in his films.
You can read more about Spielberg’s recent work on BriefLedger’s coverage of his upcoming Disclosure Day.
Runway’s co-CEO: “This is not a zero-sum game”
Cristóbal Valenzuela, Runway’s co-CEO, said in a press conference before the Howard chat that he believes much of the content circulating online will soon be AI-generated by users, but disputed whether that would diminish traditionally made films.
“This is not a zero-sum game,” Valenzuela said. “You’re free to choose what medium you want to do.”
He also pushed back on doom-and-gloom predictions. “I don’t think that you take the human out of the generation part,” he said. “The human is the one generating the content in the first place.”
UK angle: the first fully AI feature hits Tribeca
The debate lands closer to home this month. Dreams of Violets, a film entirely generated by artificial intelligence and directed by brothers Ash and Pooya Koosha, screened at the Tribeca Film Festival on 10 June 2026. All images and characters in the film were generated using AI-powered video tools, based on journalistic reports, photographs, and eyewitness accounts.
No UK theatrical release date has been confirmed at the time of writing, and the film has not yet received a BBFC rating. UK audiences will be watching closely — as will the industry bodies negotiating the legal guardrails Howard says everyone must help build.
“It’s all our job to worry about it, think about it, experiment with it, learn from it, and talk to each other and work on it,” Howard said. “But it’s going to evolve, and audiences are ultimately going to tell us.”
For more on how Hollywood is navigating the AI moment, see BriefLedger’s recent piece on Masters of the Universe and the blockbuster landscape and our coverage of War Machine 2 heading to Netflix.
Source: Variety, “Ron Howard Thinks Audiences Will Decide Whether AI Films Succeed,” 12 June 2026 | IndieWire, “Another New AI Production Company Inks a Big Creative Partnership,” 4 November 2025
Reported from publicly available interviews and verified press sources. Last reviewed 14 June 2026.
Lewis Calvert Founder & Editor, BriefLedger
Lewis founded BriefLedger and has six years of experience covering film, TV, and entertainment news. He leads the site’s Movies and TV sections and runs the news desk — always with a straight-talking British take.
