Prime Video orders three animated series from its fledgling GenAI Creators’ Fund

Love, Diana Music Hunters

Amazon-owned streamer Prime Video has ordered three animated series from its GenAI Creators’ Fund, backed by Amazon MGM Studios and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

The three projects are Love, Diana Music Hunters, created by Albie Hecht, chief content officer at pocket.watch; Cupcake & Friends, created by BuzzFeed Studios; and Punky Duck, from Jorge R Gutierrez (The Book of Life).

Love, Diana Music Hunters is a spin-off from 12-year-old YouTuber Eva Diana Kidisyuk’s popular channel Kids Diana Show.

It follows a young band of K-pop space-travelling musicians as they race to a planet where they must perform a concert to restore the music and save the aliens. Hecht is a former president of entertainment at Nickelodeon and developer of SpongeBob SquarePants.

Cupcake & Friends

Cupcake & Friends follows a “relatable” cupcake and her friends as they face the “hilarious and thrilling” challenges of a sleepover, with unexpected twists.

Punky Duck follows a lovable punk duck and his feline best friend as they tear through a wildly exaggerated LA, stumbling into alien invasions, giant monsters, robot criminal conspiracies, telenovela-style family drama and supernatural mayhem.

Emmy-winner Gutierrez’s other credits include El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera for Nickelodeon and Maya & the Three for Netflix.

The series are being backed by GenAI Creators’ Fund and Project Nara, Amazon MGM Studios’ purpose-built AI production platform, built on AWS.

Punky Duck

Amazon said its GenAI Creators’ Fund is a joint initiative that gives creators of all styles and backgrounds access to professional-grade AI tools and funding as it seeks to bring together established filmmakers, digital creators and technology start-ups to produce entertainment.

All three series, which are the first projects to originate from the fund, will premiere on Prime Video and come after its studio arm shifted away from original programming for children back in 2019.

Project Nara is described by the tech giant as a collaborative production workspace where creative teams can generate video, make edits, provide feedback and track progress in real time, supporting both animation and live-action production workflows.

“Creative breakthroughs happen when visionary storytellers are given access to transformative tools,” said Albert Cheng, head of AI Studios at Amazon MGM Studios.

“The GenAI Creators’ Fund and Project Nara position human creativity at the centre of our efforts to integrate generative AI into our production processes at Amazon MGM Studios. We’re proud of the work that these filmmakers have accomplished and look forward to sharing these creators’ visions with the world.”

Samira Bakhtiar, general manager of media and entertainment, games and sports at AWS, said: “Project Nara illustrates how AWS can help filmmakers of all kinds bring AI to the full creative pipeline, from concept to screen, using a wide range of familiar models and tools on a cloud trusted by the entertainment industry.”