Google goes Hollywood: the global brand rewriting the story of artificial intelligence
Through 100 Zeros, its alliance with Range Media Partners, Google is no longer watching cinema from the outside: it finances films, commissions shorts, launches micro-series and rewards stories that imagine a hopeful, technology-enabled future.
Through 100 Zeros, its alliance with Range Media Partners, Google is no longer watching cinema from the outside: it finances films, commissions shorts, launches micro-series and rewards stories that imagine a hopeful, technology-enabled future.
For decades, Hollywood has told the story of artificial intelligence as a threat. Machines that rebel, algorithms that watch, cold futures in which humanity fades. Google wants to change that script, and it has chosen to do so from inside the industry.
Its vehicle is 100 Zeros, an alliance formed a year ago between Google and Range Media Partners, the talent agency and production company founded in 2020 by Peter Micelli. Range represents names such as Bradley Cooper, Halle Berry and Johnny Depp, and helped produce A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. The mission is threefold: shape how technology appears on screen, experiment with new formats and build relationships with talent.
“We live too much in this dystopian idea,” Micelli says of Hollywood’s view of AI.
A fund that feeds on its own stories
100 Zeros works as a revolving fund: what its projects earn is reinvested in new ones. Neither Google nor Range has disclosed the amount, though sources speak of several million dollars. Its slate already includes prestige titles such as Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value and The Wrong Girls, with Kristen Stewart, while Family Movie, a horror comedy directed by Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, is on the way.
Sweetwater: the hologram of a star
The most symbolic piece is Sweetwater, a short film commissioned by Google and Range that has already toured festivals. Kyra Sedgwick plays the AI-generated hologram of a late film star who appears to her grieving son. Google’s own AI researchers advised on how such a digital ghost could plausibly work.
It is cinema that does not dodge the difficult questions about memory, identity and legacy — but approaches them through emotion rather than fear.
Micro-series, smart glasses and a $3.5 million prize
The strategy goes far beyond a single short:
- Microdramas for Google TV. From December, the platform — with around 50 million monthly users — will premiere short-episode series designed for the phone. Among them is Dateable, from Mike Fleiss, creator of The Bachelor, with further projects in development with Kenan Thompson, Simon Fuller and McG. It is a booming format: research firm Omdia estimates it will generate around $14 billion worldwide this year.
- Cinema for smart glasses. At the Venice Film Festival, 100 Zeros presented projects for Android XR: Nevatars, an animated story by Andy Serkis in which viewers converse with AI characters, and Galápagos: The Last Eden, a documentary narrated by Margot Robbie that lets audiences talk with a digital Charles Darwin.
- Future Vision XPrize. A $3.5 million prize for shorts that imagine hopeful futures made possible by technology. The winner, The Gifted, tells the story of a child who recreates his late mother from her messages, voice and diary. 100 Zeros will help turn it into a feature film.
On top of all this comes Google DeepMind’s partnership with A24, the cult independent studio, to develop AI tools for filmmakers, alongside an investment of around $75 million.
Sonia Boost’s view
CEO of The Wonder World Group, film producer and artificial intelligence strategist
“For years I have moved between two worlds that long seemed opposed: film sets and algorithms. That is why I welcome what Google is doing with 100 Zeros. It confirms something I have argued for a long time: the future of cinema is not about choosing between human talent and artificial intelligence, but about bringing them together.
AI is not here to replace a director’s eye, an actress’s emotion or a producer’s intuition. It is here to open doors that used to be reserved for the big studios: more stories, more voices and more ways to reach audiences. Sweetwater proves it. Technology does not take the soul out of a story. It puts itself at the story’s service.
And there is a second lesson, perhaps the most important one for business: the brands that lead the next decade will not be those that spend the most on advertising, but those that dare to tell stories. Google has already understood this. The question is how many brands will dare to follow.
Artificial intelligence does not replace creativity. It multiplies it.”
Image: Kyra Sedgwick, star of Sweetwater, at the Tribeca Festival. Photo: Bryan Berlin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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