Hollywood
BAFTA names Krishnendu Majumdar as TV Committee chair
MUMBAI: The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has named the newly elected chairs and deputy chairs of its Sector Committees (Film, Television and Games), who will also sit on the Academy’s Board of Trustees.
Krishnendu Majumdar has been elected as chair of the Television Committee alongside Emma Morgan, who has been elected as deputy chair.
Majumdar is an award-winning producer and director and was trained on the BBC Production Trainee scheme, the ITN News Trainee scheme and the BBC Drama Series Directors Academy. He is the co-founder of an independent production company called Me + You Productions with partner Richard Yee and is developing a slate of factual, comedy and drama projects.
On the other hand, Pippa Harris has been elected as chair of the Film Committee, having held the position of deputy chair for four years. Pippa serves alongside Marc Samuelson, who has been elected as deputy chair.
Harvey Elliott enters the second half of his two-year term as chair of the Games Committee. All Sector Committee chairs and deputy chairs are directors of the Academy, and sit on the Board of Trustees.
Anne Morrison continues as chair of the Academy for the remainder of her two-year term alongside Jane Lush, who was elected to deputy chair earlier this month.
BAFTA chief operating officer Kevin Price said, “I’m delighted to welcome three new members to our Board of Trustees as a result of our recent Sector Committee elections this month. These committees – Film, Television and Games – represent a BAFTA membership of around 7,500 industry professionals and experienced practitioners in the UK and around the world, and they help us, as an Academy, develop and promote the art forms of the moving image, inspire practitioners and benefit the public.”
BAFTA’s Board of Trustees comprises:
• Chair of the Academy: Anne Morrison
• Deputy chair of the Academy: Jane Lush
• Chair, Film Committee: Pippa Harris
• Deputy Chair, Film Committee: Marc Samuelson
• Chair, Television Committee: Krishnendu Majumdar
• Deputy Chair, Television Committee: Emma Morgan
• Chair, Games Committee: Harvey Elliott
• Chair, Learning & Events Committee: Sara Putt
• Two co-opted Trustees: Medwyn Jones, Samir Shah
Samuelson, Majumdar and Morgan are new Board members in 2015.
BAFTA’s Sector Committees recommend to the Board of Trustees how best to carry out the Academy’s mission in their respective industry sectors, while the Board itself manages the business of the Academy and is the ultimate authority on its affairs.
Hollywood
Utopai Studios partners Huace to deploy PAI for long form content
Deal includes revenue sharing as Huace adopts AI engine across global ops
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… algorithm, the script just got a silicon co-writer. In a move that signals how storytelling itself is being re-engineered, U.S.-based Utopai Studios has partnered China’s Huace Film & TV Co. Ltd. to bring artificial general intelligence into the heart of long-form content creation.
At the centre of the deal is PAI, Utopai’s cinematic storytelling system, which Huace will deploy as a core engine across its production pipeline from development and creative iteration to global localisation. The partnership includes a large-scale annual usage commitment from Huace, alongside a usage-based revenue-sharing model, underscoring both ambition and commercial confidence on both sides.
For Huace, one of China’s largest film and television companies, the bet is not on automation alone but on scale with control. With distribution spanning over 200 countries and a presence across more than 20 international platforms, including Netflix and YouTube, the company brings a vast content ecosystem where even marginal efficiency gains can translate into significant output shifts. Its extensive TV IP library further positions it as fertile ground for AI-assisted storytelling workflows.
The choice of PAI follows what Huace described as a rigorous evaluation of existing AI tools, many of which remain limited to fragmented use cases such as video generation or editing. What tipped the scales, according to the company, was PAI’s ability to handle long-form narrative complexity maintaining continuity, structure, and creative coherence across entire story arcs rather than isolated clips.
Utopai, for its part, is using the partnership to anchor its international expansion strategy, pitching PAI as an enterprise-ready system built for customisation, privacy, and regulatory adaptability across markets. That positioning becomes particularly relevant as global media companies increasingly scrutinise how AI integrates into proprietary workflows.
The timing is notable. Earlier this month, Utopai upgraded PAI to support three-minute 4K video generation and advanced multi-shot sequencing features designed to tackle one of AI storytelling’s biggest hurdles: consistency across scenes.
What emerges is not just another tech collaboration, but a glimpse into how the grammar of filmmaking could evolve. Because if stories were once crafted frame by frame, the next chapter might just be coded scene by scene.
