Pouya Shahbazian, a producer on the Divergent franchise, has launched Staircase Studios AI, an artificial intelligence-driven film, TV and gaming studio.

Staircase touts its own proprietary AI workflow, ForwardMotion, which claims to be able to produce near-studio-quality movie releases for under $500,000 each. The studio, which said it aims to produce around 30 low budget projects in the next three to four years, unveiled a teaser with the first five minutes from its debut feature, The Woman With Red Hair, directed by Brett Stuart and from Michael Schatzs 2016 Black List script. The AI-driven film has original character designs by former Pixar exec Teddy Newton (The Incredibles) and art and designs from Emmy-winning animator Alfred Gimeno (Kung Fu Panda). The drama about a true-life war resister in World War II Holland is voiced by Maya-Nika Bewley, Leander Vyvey, Angus Castle-Doughty and Geoffrey Breton.

Staircase Studios AI has as a partner and lead investor Kenneth Lerer, a co-founder of The Huffington Post and currently managing director emeritus of the venture capital firm Lerer Hippeau. Shahbazian becomes CEO of the film, TV and gaming studio, while Brett Stuart serves as head of AI filmmaking.

After packaging and selling 150 projects into the studio system over the past 15 years, Ive borne witness to far too much inefficiency to continue the status quo. Over the past year, Ive dedicated myself to pairing ethical AI usage with our industrys most underutilized assetsoverlooked stories waiting to be produced from fantastic writers and directors, Shahbazian, whose producer credits include Greg Berlantis Love Simon and Shawn Levy and Eric Heisserers Shadow Bone, said in a statement.

Staircase is in pre-production on a second feature, Every Living Creature, an animated adventure thriller directed by Bernie Su (Artificial) and from an adapted script by J.R. Arellano (Flicka 2).