Sora Comeback as a Hollywood Tool: OpenAI Plans to Revive Its Video AI

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Sora Comeback as a Hollywood Tool: OpenAI Plans to Revive Its Video AI.

A billion dollars with Disney, then suddenly radio silence: In March 2025, OpenAI quietly shut down its video AI Sora — and the film industry was left with an open bill. Seven months later, what the pause was really about is becoming clear: Sora is set to return, but not to your smartphone, but to the Hollywood studio.

The Information breaks the story; the Spanish tech platform Xataka has contextualized the report and fleshed it out with industry details. According to this, OpenAI is negotiating with a still young startup led by two confidants of the old Sora program: Bill Peebles, until recently Sora's head of research, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who had to step down as Disney chief in 1994 and subsequently co-built DreamWorks.

This is a strategic shift with consequences. Anyone wanting to use AI to generate scenes, backgrounds, or animation in Hollywood in the future could be working with OpenAI technology in the background within two or three years — without "Sora" having to appear in the credits.

Why Sora disappeared in the first place

At the beginning of 2024, Sora set off the wave of AI video generation. The first clips were so smooth that they made the famous "Will Smith eating spaghetti" meme from earlier models look like a slideshow. But then OpenAI came under pressure on multiple fronts simultaneously: Anthropic on one side, a whole range of Chinese models on the other, plus the constant accusation of doing too much at once and doing nothing right.

So Sora was sacrificed — not out of weakness, but as a computing-power reshuffle. As Xataka summarized the move at the time, the shutdown was meant to "free up resources for fewer products, but stronger models." Caught in the crossfire was a one-billion-dollar deal with Disney that had previously been considered Sora's biggest deal. The fact that even this deal was put on ice shows how serious OpenAI was about the strategic shift.

A startup, two Hollywood veterans

Since Sora's demise, the AI video landscape has shifted significantly. Apps for video creation, "with the Chinese at the top," have exploded according to Xataka; meanwhile, the first productions are emerging that were shot entirely with AI. OpenAI was in danger of losing touch — reason enough for the counteroffensive, just with a different logic than in 2024.

Specifically, according to The Information, it concerns a startup that has been operating largely in the shadows. It was co-founded by Bill Peebles — who had headed Sora research at OpenAI until recently — and Jeffrey Katzenberg, who left as president of Disney in 1994 and later built up DreamWorks. According to available descriptions, the startup is to train its own tools for the film industry, i.e., not sell the video model itself to end customers, but the necessary software around it.

The deal has not yet been completed, according to The Information. Should it come to fruition, OpenAI would receive a stake in the startup in return — so not direct money for Sora licenses, but shares in the future business. What exactly OpenAI contributes is open: training data, computing power, research, or model weights — anything is conceivable.

What this means for you and the industry

Anyone who wanted to try Sora themselves or already has is, for now, out of luck. A return as a public consumer product is not on the table according to today's reports — rather, the move reads like an acknowledgment that the mass market for video AI is currently in Chinese hands.

It's different for industry. If the Katzenberg-Peebles tools become market-ready, US studios could release films and series in the next few years with significant AI content — without this having to be visible in the credits. What this means in the long term for screenwriters, animators, and effects departments depends on which work steps are actually automated — and at which points people continue to put their hands on.

As of now, Sora itself is dead, the Sora course lives on. The exciting question is whether Hollywood will reach for it before China rolls past with the next model train.