Hollywood
Justin Timberlake to write original music for DreamWorks’ ‘Trolls’
MUMBAI: Nine-time Grammy and four-time Emmy Award winning musician and actor Justin Timberlake will serve as executive music producer as well as pen original music for DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls. In this role, Timberlake will oversee all creative direction for the film’s music as well as perform multiple songs on the soundtrack. The multifaceted artist also stars as Branch, a hilariously hardcore survivalist who hides his surprising true colors, in DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming comedy.
Joined by Academy and Tony Award nominee Anna Kendrick as Princess Poppy, the two embark on a hair-raising adventure as the globally iconic Trolls make their motion picture debut. The film will be distributed on 4 November, 2016, by 20th Century Fox.
“Justin is an amazingly versatile artist and producer whose unprecedented creative talents provide a unique voice and sound for our movie.Trolls is a comedy with fantastic music at its core and we can’t think of a more perfect artist to elevate this soundtrack to incredible heights,” said DreamWorks Animation co-presidents of feature animation Bonnie Arnold and Mireille Soria.
“Working with Justin has been a dream come true from day one,” added director Mike Mitchell.
“Between the fantastic work he’s doing in bringing to life the character of Branch and his production oversight on the soundtrack, we couldn’t be in more inspired hands,” said co-director Walt Dohrn.
“I have always envisioned bringing the two worlds of film and music together for one epic event. I couldn’t be more excited that they will collide in DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls. This film is very special, the music is going to be very special and I can’t wait for everyone to experience it all,” said Timberlake.
Produced by Gina Shay, the film for the first time tells the story behind the beloved Trolls and their gravity defying and colourful manes.
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.
