Mar 06, 2026 11:53am IST
Netflix Acquires Ben Affleck’s AI Filmmaking Startup InterPositive, Taps Actor-Director as Senior Advisor
Right in the middle of conversations surrounding the potential acquisition of Warner Bros., Netflix has made headlines with another rare deal. The streaming giant has acquired InterPositive, a startup founded by Ben Affleck that develops AI-powered tools for filmmakers. The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.
Affleck will serve as a senior advisor to Netflix following the deal, while the entire 16-person InterPositive team comprising engineers, researchers and creatives will join the company as part of the acquisition.
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Historically, Netflix has been more of a builder than a buyer. However, the company believes InterPositive offers a unique set of AI tools designed to “keep filmmakers at the center of the process.” Netflix plans to offer access to the technology to its creative partners but does not intend to sell it commercially in the marketplace.
Based in Los Angeles, Affleck founded InterPositive in 2022. Speaking about the company’s approach in a video shared by Netflix alongside the acquisition announcement, the filmmaker clarified that the technology is not meant to generate films from simple prompts.
“It’s not about text-prompting or generating something from nothing,” Affleck said. “AI, people mostly think of it as making something from nothing: ‘I’m going to type something into a computer and it’s going to give me a movie.’ That’s not what this is.”
According to Affleck, the InterPositive system builds an AI model based on an existing production’s dailies and allows filmmakers to introduce the model into the post-production process. This enables capabilities such as mixing and color work, relighting shots and adding visual effects.
Affleck also detailed the company’s origin story. “In 2022, I spent a lot of time observing the early rise of AI in production,” he said. “As a filmmaker, I could see how these models came up short. For artists to apply these tools toward telling the stories we dedicate our lives to, they need to be purpose-built to represent and protect all the qualities that make a great story the nuances of filmmaking, the predictable and unpredictable challenges of production environments, the distortion of a lens, or the way light shape-shifts across a scene.”
He added that preserving the human element of storytelling remains central to the company’s philosophy. “We also need to preserve what makes storytelling human, which is judgment the kind that takes decades to build, experience to hone, and that only people can have. I knew I had a responsibility to my peers and our industry to protect the power of human creativity and the people behind it.”
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