Runway launches joint original-IP program with Lionsgate

• runwayml's announcement says Runway and Lionsgate are expanding their partnership into a joint development program for original IP, and the linked official post adds that Lionsgate also took an equity stake in Runway.
• The same official post says the first co-developed slate starts with a short-form episodic series that combines Lionsgate IP with Runway's generative models.
• runwayml's festival post announced a sold-out New York premiere for Runway's 2026 AI Festival, while the festival site places that screening at Alice Tully Hall and lists a second gala in Los Angeles on June 18.
• According to c_valenzuelab's partnership post, Runway is "doubling down," and the official announcement frames the deal as a bigger push into filmmaker events, production workflows, and co-developed projects.

Runway is doing three things at once here: building with Lionsgate, turning its festival into a two-city showcase, and using the same week to show where its tools already land inside production, from festival shorts to episodic post workflows. That is a cleaner picture of Runway's pitch than another model demo reel.

The headline item is simple: Runway and Lionsgate are launching a joint development program to create new IP. The official announcement says the first slate begins with a short-form episodic series, and says Lionsgate will use Runway's models as part of a broader studio AI strategy.

The same post adds two concrete deal terms:

• Lionsgate has taken an equity interest in Runway.
• The companies plan a slate of co-developed projects, not a one-off experiment.

Cristóbal Valenzuela's "we are doubling down" post matches the official framing. The interesting bit is not just that a studio is licensing tools. It is that the partnership now covers capital, development, and distribution-facing creative work in one package.

The official announcement says Lionsgate had already been using Runway across pre-visualization, storyboarding, and final-frame production. The expansion widens that from internal workflow support into filmmaker-facing programs and co-produced media.

That matters because the post describes a stack of uses instead of a single AI-film talking point:

• Pre-visualization
• Storyboarding
• Final-frame production
• Filmmaker events
• Co-developed original projects

This is the part creative teams will probably bookmark. Runway is presenting itself less as a prompt box and more as production infrastructure inside a studio pipeline.

Runway tied the partnership news to the opening night of its 2026 AI Festival. The festival site says this is Runway's fourth annual festival, now expanded beyond film into design, new media, gaming, advertising, and fashion, with gala screenings in New York and Los Angeles.

The same page lays out the concrete festival structure:

• New York gala: June 11 at Alice Tully Hall
• Los Angeles gala: June 18 at The Broad Stage
• Tracks: Film, Design, New Media, Gaming, Advertising, Fashion
• Finalists appear in virtual showcases and gala screenings
• Winners are shown at partner festivals worldwide

In c_valenzuelab's festival post, Valenzuela also pointed to the Los Angeles leg at The Broad Stage, with speakers including Master G from Netflix and Joel Kuwahara of Bento Box Entertainment. That makes the festival part screening venue, part recruiting surface for creators who already work in animation and streaming.

The festival feed was not just Runway self-promotion. promise_ai's post called out Dave Clark's short film making its New York premiere that night, which is the clearest evidence in the pool that the event still functions as a release surface for actual projects, not only a branded conference.

For creators, the festival hub is also more structured than the usual AI short-film roundup. It lists cash prizes and large Runway credit packages across each category, including a $20,000 Grand Prix plus 1,000,000 credits.

The most concrete workflow claim in this evidence set came two days earlier, when c_valenzuelab's production example described a major media company using Runway to restyle end-credit sequences while preserving text overlays across 20 to 25 episodes a week.

That post gives unusually specific economics for a studio AI claim:

• Manual process cost: $10,000 to $15,000 per season
• Runway cost: about $10 per run
• Claimed reduction: more than 1,000x
• Cadence: 20 to 25 episodes per week

It is a narrow use case, but it is real production glue. Paired with the Lionsgate expansion, it shows the kind of repetitive post work Runway wants to own while the headline deal reaches for original shows and new IP.