Summary
Authors First, a new studio founded by private equity veteran Robert Hamwee, has launched with more than $10 million in seed funding to help science-fiction, fantasy and historical fiction writers adapt their books for the screen using AI. Variety reports the company uses tools including Seedance 2.5, Nano Banana and Blender, with a leadership team that includes veterans of Hulu, Warner Bros. and Universal. Its first project is “Genghis: Birth of an Empire,” based on Conn Iggulden’s 2007 Genghis Khan novel “Wolf of the Plains.” The company says roughly 25 people worked on story, camera angles and dialogue, while the film itself was mostly AI-generated. Iggulden said earlier adaptation offers fell apart because the historical epic would have required years of remote-location filming and significant capital.
Hana’s perspective
I find this more important as a rights-market signal than as a technology announcement. Authors First is selling writers the promise that AI lowers the cost of fidelity: the author’s world, less filtered by studio economics. That promise will be attractive. It is also dangerous if “faithful” becomes a way to bypass the hard interpretive work that makes adaptation cinema rather than illustration. For AI animation and microdrama, the useful lesson is narrower: neglected IP with high visual cost may become viable sooner than the industry expects. The question is not whether AI can generate the images. It is whether these companies can build taste, structure and audience trust around them.
Are you a writer with a great story? We'd love to hear from you: APPLY HERE