{"id":67117,"date":"2025-10-11T02:42:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T02:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/67117\/"},"modified":"2025-10-11T02:42:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T02:42:14","slug":"ted-sarandos-and-guillermo-del-toro-unveil-stop-motion-studio-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/67117\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Sarandos and Guillermo del Toro Unveil Stop-Motion Studio Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t
\u201cFrankenstein\u201d director Guillermo del Toro<\/a> and Netflix boss Ted Sarandos<\/a> have unveiled plans for a trailblazing stop-motion studio which will be built at France\u2019s prestigious Gobelins school, whose famous alumni includes \u201cDespicable Me\u201d director Pierre Buffin.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Friday, the pair told a select group of journalists at the Gobelins school in Paris that the project will give the next generation of animation artists the opportunity to learn, collaborate, innovate and push the boundaries of stop-motion craft.<\/p>\n

\n\tMore than a just a training center, the stop motion studio is co-founded by del Toro and Netflix, and is being conceived as a living laboratory of experimentation and research at the Gobelins (which is repped by Gotham Group).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe project is also a tribute to the legacy of the late Mark Gustafson, whose worked inspired del Toro, creator of the stop-motion \u201cPinocchio.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix also boasts partnerships with creative forces within the animation industry in France, notably with banners such as Fortiche (\u201cArcane\u201d), TAT (\u201cAst\u00e9rix: Le Combat des Chefs\u201d) and Blue Spirit (\u201cBlue Eye Samurai\u201d). <\/p>\n

\n\tReflecting on how Netflix got on board the initiative, del Toro said he was approached by Sarandos, who asked him what was on his bucket list. \u201cI said to him, \u2018You are a billionaire. If you stick with me, I\u2019ll make you a millionaire.\u2019 I believe that it is imperative to look at things that need to be preserved, even if in the short term, you don\u2019t see clearly why, except that for some people, they are very important. When he supported \u2018Pinocchio\u2019 after nearly 20 years of chasing it, that was important.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDel Toro said he and Netflix are embarking on a second stop motion adventure based on the novel \u201cThe Buried Giant\u201d by Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. \u201cThe timing for this school is perfect because we can then integrate people coming in or coming out of it into that project as apprentices or people that learn the craft of creating sets or puppets,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tSarandos said he was compelled by stop motion animation because of the fact that everything is handmade.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat I really love about stop motion in an educational setting is that what I learned from this man (del Toro) is that stop motion is filmmaking. It\u2019s costume design, it\u2019s set design, it\u2019s lighting, it\u2019s camera, it\u2019s everything. Every discipline that you do to make a film, you\u2019re doing in stop motion animation. The human touch of it is something that people see through,\u201d Sarandos said.<\/p>\n

\n\tUltimately, del Toro wishes to see the stop motion studio building future bridges between European and Latin American creators.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn Mexico, particularly, stop motion is always in dire need of support. They don\u2019t receive much support from the government down there. I think that the important thing is for Europe and Latin America to be linked, it opens a whole road of hope,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\n\tDuring the presentation, del Toro also candidly weighed in on the current debate over the threat of AI, and said it was important to \u201cdifferentiate the term AI as a tool and AI as a proposal of generating creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you look at a particle system that has been used in animation for more than 15 years, that system contains elements that could be seen as AI. Generative AI is a different conversation,\u201d said del Toro.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA few months ago, somebody wrote me in a high position. They said, \u2018What is your stance about AI?\u2019 And I answered the email saying, \u2018I\u2019d rather die.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think that animation is very frail because animation at an industrial level is about cost and about time. And what I do know, having been in animation since I was in my teens, is that sometimes that is what is desirable, time. I love doing \u2018Pinocchio\u2019 because I have more than two years to change my mind. It\u2019s like watching an accident in slow motion. You have time to get out of the car,\u201d joked del Toro, who argued that \u201cstop motion is the equivalent to slow food in the culinary industry\u201d and pointed out that \u201cthe idea that faster is better is something that is always sold by big industrial interests.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe said stop motion was unique because \u201cIn an era in which you can have AI intruding in any other form of animation, stop motion is AI-proof.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSarandos, meanwhile, told Variety after the presentation, that he views \u201cAI as a creator\u2019s tool, not a creative tool on its own.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think that the idea that AI will out-imagine things and humans is pretty unlikely. It\u2019s quite the antithesis of what it\u2019s built to do,\u201d Sarandos said.<\/p>\n

\n\tSarandos continued, \u201cAI is meant to take all the things that have ever been done and give you the most predictable outcome, which is the opposite of what writers try to do when they write a screenplay or that a filmmaker is trying to do when they tell a story. So I don\u2019t get too nervous about it displacing creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDel Toro and Sarandos presented the world premiere<\/a> of \u201cFrankeinstein<\/a>\u201d at the Venice Film Festival alongside Oscar Isaac<\/a> and\u00a0Jacob Elordi<\/a>. The anticipated $120 million epic got a lengthy standing ovation and is being talked about as a major awards contender for Netflix.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFrankenstein\u201d director Guillermo del Toro and Netflix boss Ted Sarandos have unveiled plans for a trailblazing stop-motion studio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,48479,4960,85,46,125,48480],"class_list":{"0":"post-67117","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-frankeinstein","12":"tag-guillermo-del-toro","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-technology","16":"tag-ted-sarandos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}