Do you want to use AI to create your own TV shows?
Emmy Award-winning startup Fable Studio bets that the answer is yes. The company has raised private funding from Amazon for Showrunner, an AI streaming platform.
The platform is scheduled to be open to all users on Thursday. Subscribers pay $10-$40 per month for credits – you can create your own animation shows or build on others' existing IPs.
Fable was launched in 2018 by veterans from the VR company Oculus, which was sold to Meta in 2014. Producer Edward Saatchi, CEO of Fable, started a showrunner in 2024 thinking that AI could do much more than cut costs in Hollywood. He believes it can guide a more interactive form of storytelling.
Fable attracted attention for showing off its abilities in 2023 by releasing a deepfake version of “South Park.” Some praised Deepfark for pushing the boundaries of high-tech, but it also hit the nerves that come when AI anxiety was high during the historic Hollywood strike.
Saatche said he believes that an approach like his will create new jobs and benefit creators. If you play your own show with a showrunner, if another user is built on it, you will get a share of around 40% revenue. The revenue is based on what people spend on credits building on top of existing shows.
“It's a very different creator-first model and I think it's very appealing to the AI creator community,” he said. “It also means that the show can attract more and more attention as users create more episodes and scenes within the creator's Storyworld.”
One big question is whether Fable can purchase Hollywood Studios.
Fable pitches studios and allows people to create derivative content to put their IP on the platform. Saatchi's pitch to the studio is to cut down on the money people pay to play with the IP if they place their IP in showrunner. They also managed to benefit from the topic when people shared their work on social media.
Many major studios use AI to some extent in their production, but few people have made it public because of their threats to employment and their sensitivity to creative processes. Saatch said the showrunner has one contract with an unknown studio and is in discussion with others, including Disney.
If the Disney deal sounds like it's far apart, Search said legacy media companies are already more comfortable with two-way interactions with fans. He cited Disney's 2024 investment in “Fortnite” Maker Epic Games.
For Disney, Search said he envisioned a model that could enter the interactive “Star Wars” world through Disney+, staying within Disney's creative guidelines and creating their own characters, planets and artistic elements.
Showrunner also creates its own shows for users to experiment with. The first big one is the “Exit Valley.” This is described as a “Family Guy” style comedy that laughs at AI technology leaders such as Sam Altman and Elon Musk. Users can upload themselves and their friends as characters and add their own satirical episodes.
Below is a selected slide from the Showrunner deck showing that you are pitching yourself to Hollywood Studios.
