Guillermo del Toro is going to save stop-motion animation – and he’s going to do it with Netflix. Announced this week, del Toro is partnering with the studio and Paris art school Gobelins to establish a training house for those with a passion for stop-motion.
Ddel Toro, of course, has been a proponent of stop-motion forever, finally making his first feature in the format with 2022’s Pinocchio. But he knows that it’s an art that needs to be nourished. As he said at the press event unveiling the initiative, “The names that are important in stop-motion are all over 50 years old…Stop-motion is perpetually on the brink of extinction. And it is perpetually preserved by slightly crazy people. It’s a tiny cult with very devoted individuals.”
But with Ted Sarandos in the conversation, we can’t help but get into the AI aspects. Sarandos has been a proponent of AI from the perspective that it won’t only help creators but will also reduce costs. And we know that del Toro is about as anti-AI as it comes. So how exactly do Sarandos and del Toro meet in the middle with their plan to save stop-motion animation?
As del Toro put it, “In an era in which you can have AI intruding in any other form of animation, stop motion is AI-proof.” While that’s a tough sell as we’re learning that there seems to be very little in the world of film that is “AI-proof,” Sarandos is surprisingly not that far off on his beliefs, telling Variety, “AI as a creator’s tool, not a creative tool on its own…I think that the idea that AI will out-imagine things and humans is pretty unlikely. It’s quite the antithesis of what it’s built to do… I don’t get too nervous about it displacing creativity.”
It’s extremely easy to slam Sarandos on matters such as this and I’ve done it in plenty of articles, but that he is actively teaming up with del Toro in ensuring that stop-motion animation lives says a lot. And with the financial backing that this provides, let’s hope we get a new wave of stop-motion directors that will once again revolutionize animation.
