Ben Affleck's 'Animals' Lands on Netflix as Its AI Use Fuels a Hollywood Debate
An expansive, nonexclusive deal puts the Disney+ original and all five Ice Age films on Netflix starting Oct. 4, with Will Trent and Pixar titles to follow.
Ben Affleck’s Animals is out today. The kidnapping thriller, directed by and starring Affleck, opened in select U.S. theaters and began streaming on Netflix on Friday.
Affleck plays a Los Angeles mayoral candidate whose son is abducted. Kerry Washington plays his wife. Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun, Ray Fisher, Adriana Paz and Luis Gerardo Méndez co-star. Affleck co-wrote the script with Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray. The film is rated R.
It is his first directing effort since 2023’s Air. The production had a rocky path: the film was paused and retooled, Matt Damon was originally set to star and moved to a producer role, and Affleck took the lead. Damon and Affleck produced the film through their Artists Equity company.
The release has become a flashpoint in Hollywood’s AI debate. At Bloomberg’s Screentime conference in Los Angeles on Sept. 30, Affleck told journalist Lucas Shaw he used AI “for lots of things in that movie,” mostly in post-production. He declined to say where, comparing a full accounting to a magician who announces “there’s another bunny under here” before the show.
He said the tools were built in-house by his own AI startup, InterPositive, using a proprietary dataset — an effort to avoid models trained on other artists’ copyrighted work. Netflix bought InterPositive in March; reports put the price near $587 million. Affleck is now a senior adviser to Netflix.
He dismissed the darkest industry forecasts as “propaganda.” “I don’t worry about Skynet,” he said, calling the film “a very human movie.”
The disclosure has sharpened questions around consent, compensation and who controls AI tools on set. At press junkets Affleck also described the film as a story about marriage and moral compromise, and said making it reinforced that he has no interest in running for office himself. Netflix released a second and final trailer ahead of the rollout. Early reviews have been divided.
