Lionsgate takes equity stake in Runway for AI short-form series

Lionsgate has taken an undisclosed equity stake in Runway and will develop new intellectual property with the AI video company, the two said on June 11, 2026, beginning with a short-form episodic series drawn from some of Lionsgate's existing franchises and Runway's generative models.

The size of the stake was not disclosed, and the investment was not cash, according to Variety. Runway's announcement calls the arrangement a "preferred partnership" within Lionsgate's AI strategy, overseen by chief AI officer Kathleen Grace, whom Lionsgate appointed in February 2026, and the studio's AI steering committee.

Under the agreement, the companies started a joint development program to develop and produce new IP and plan a slate of co-developed projects blending AI and content, with the short-form series first. They also said Lionsgate would serve as a presenting partner at the Runway AI Festival and that they would run filmmaker-focused events together. Neither company named the Lionsgate properties the series will use, and TheWrap reported that no release timetable was given.

"Runway is a great creative partner, an exciting part of our AI strategy and a valuable driver in expanding our storytelling capabilities," Lionsgate vice chairman Michael Burns said in the announcement. "This is an iterative process. As we continue to expand the use cases of Runway technology across our production operations and introduce its tools to more of our filmmakers, we believe it will help our talent redefine and reshape the art of the possible in their creative endeavors."

Runway co-founder and co-CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela said that the studios most serious about AI "are thinking about it as a creative resource, not a cost-cutting tool. Lionsgate gets that."

Lionsgate and Runway announced their first partnership in September 2024, when Runway agreed to train a model on Lionsgate's library of more than 20,000 film and television titles. C21Media reported that the deal drew heavy industry criticism at the time, and TheWrap and The Verge have since reported that the partnership ran into trouble generating footage suitable for a full film.

Runway sells its models to developers through Runway Dev, an API that carries the company's Gen-4.5 text-to-video and image-to-video model, its Aleph 2.0 editing model and third-party models including ByteDance's Seedance 2.5 and Google's Veo 3.1. Runway raised funding earlier in 2026 at a $5.3 billion valuation, per reporting by Bloomberg cited by Variety.

The expansion follows other studio moves into AI. C21Media and IBC noted that Disney struck a deal with OpenAI's Sora that collapsed after Sora was shut down, and that Netflix bought Ben Affleck's filmmaking technology company InterPositive.

For creators, the practical question the deal leaves open is access. The companies have not said whether filmmakers outside Lionsgate's own production pipeline will be able to use any model trained on the studio's library.

Lionsgate and Runway have not announced a title, cast or release date for the first series.