Deadline has the exclusive that Utopai Studios has named Hans Ku, a former Disney, DreamWorks and Yahoo executive, its Chief Product Officer. According to the report, Ku will lead product, engineering, research and business development, with the aim of scaling the technology behind the studio’s film and TV slate and expanding its cinematic storytelling engine.
Deadline notes that Ku most recently was VP of AI & Engineering in Disney’s Office of Technology Enablement, where he played a key role in Disney’s work with OpenAI around its generative-video offering Sora. Earlier in his career he built a system for traditional animators at Walt Disney Feature Animation and, as an executive at DreamWorks Animation, created the DreamColor display in collaboration with HP, work that earned him a Scientific and Engineering Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has also been an entrepreneur and product executive at Tubi, Yahoo and Flipagram, which Deadline describes as a predecessor of TikTok.
In a statement quoted by Deadline, Cecilia Shen, CEO and co-founder of Utopai Studios, said Ku has consistently worked at the intersection of creative ambition and emerging technology and joins a studio where filmmakers and technology teams develop tools together on active productions. As the company builds what she called a global studio for a new era of entertainment, she said, Ku “will be central to scaling the technology and infrastructure that make that possible.”
Ku said that because the studio and its technology are growing together, lessons from real productions can feed directly into better products and workflows, which are then offered to filmmakers and studios around the world. His focus, he said, is building Utopai’s PAI alongside filmmakers, giving them better tools to explore ideas, refine their work and bring their creative vision to the screen while creative decisions stay in their hands. Read the full report at Deadline.
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