Hollywood
Sony Pictures signs three-film deal with international producers
MUMBAI: Sony Pictures International Productions (SPIP) has inked a deal with Mexico and Los Angeles-based producers Eduardo Cisneros and Jason Shuman. With this multi-picture development, the producers will write and produce three new feature films with the studio.
The partnership furthers Sony Pictures’ strategy to broaden its global presence and its support of local-language productions.
SPIP EVP – business affairs and operations Laine Kline is of the opinion that it is an ongoing priority for the studio to serve its Spanish-speaking audiences in Latin America and the United States. “Cisneros and Shuman have an exceptional track record for capturing several such important communities and beyond,” said Kline in a statement.
Cisneros is working with the Latin American film industry from some time and was the associate producer on Eugenio Derbez’s Instructions Not Included. He is also the co-creator of the TV comedy series Familia P. Luche and XHDRBZ.
As part of a partnership with Universal TV, he teamed with Aseem Batra to develop a single-camera comedy Don’t Judge Me for ABC. On the other hand, Shuman has produced over 20 films like Role Models, Lone Survivor, Rebel In The Rye, etc.
Cisneros is represented by Valor Entertainment Group, WME, and Ziffren Brittenham whereas Shuman is represented by CAA and McKuin Frankel Whitehead.
The two of them started working together in 2014 to become Cisneros & Shuman team. Among many projects they have created are – Fox feature comedy Upgrade and the 20th Television/FBC pilot Star-Crossed.
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.
