Hollywood
Jennifer Lawrence named the most bankable star of 2014
MUMBAI: Jennifer Lawrence’ blockbuster films The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and X-Men: Days of Future Past have made a total of $1.4 billion in the box office.
The success of these films has made the 24 year old actress the most bankable box office star of 2014, according to Forbes magazine.
Lawrence was listed ahead of Chris Pratt and Scarlett Johansson on Forbes’ annual list, which assigns rankings based on the year’s most successful films and the actors who starred in them.
Pratt came in second with a combined $1.2bn, thanks to the financial success of comic-book fantasy Guardians of the Galaxy and The Lego Movie, in which he provided the lead voice role.
Johansson made it to the third spot with a total of $1.18bn after appearing in superhero sequel Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Lucy and Under the Skin.
Here is the list of top 10 highest-grossing actors of 2014:
1. Jennifer Lawrence: $1.4bn (The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – part one, X-Men: Days of Future Past)
2. Chris Pratt: $1.2bn (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Lego Movie)
3. Scarlett Johansson: $1.18bn (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Lucy, Under the Skin)
4. Mark Wahlberg: $1bn (Transformers: Age of Extinction)
5. Chris Evans: $800m (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Snowpiercer)
6. Emma Stone: $764m (The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Magic in the Moonlight, Birdman)
7. Angelina Jolie: $758m (Maleficent)
8. James McAvoy: $747m (Days of Future Past, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby)
9. Michael Fassbender: $746m (Days of Future Past)
10. Hugh Jackman: $746m (Days of Future Past)
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.
