Shares in Lionsgate had a roller coaster ride on Tuesday after a report that an activist investor had urged a pivot of the Hollywood studio towards artificial intelligence to avoid becoming an “Al casualty.”
Semafor was the first to report on the letter from Sagar Gupta, who leads the activism strategy at Anson Funds, that urged Lionsgate to transform itself for the AI era, or consider a for sale on its front door.
“Lionsgate’s stock has reacted sharply — and negatively — to the release of new AI video models, including Sora and Seedance, which we believe reflects a default market assumption that a studio is more likely to be an AI casualty than an AI beneficiary,” Gupta argued in the private letter that The Hollywood Reporter understands was received by the studio’s board of directors.
Stock in Lionsgate closed on Tuesday closed down 49 cents, or around 4 percent, at $11.87, after experiencing wild swings in early morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
Kathleen Grace, a former executive at YouTube and the rights-tracking AI company Vermillio, was hired earlier this year as the first chief AI officer at Lionsgate, and company CEO Jon Feltheimer on recent analyst calls has made much of advances by the studio in integrating AI tools to navigate disruptive filmmaking technologies.
