In brief
- Showrunner users can create full episodes with prompts or photos, and share content on platforms like YouTube.
- Founder Edward Saatchi told Decrypt the company is in talks with studios, with plans to build purpose-trained models around official storyworlds.
- The startup is backed by Amazon’s Alexa Fund, though investment terms remain undisclosed.
A startup backed by Amazon’s Alexa Fund has debuted an AI-powered streaming platform that lets users generate animated shows in minutes, raising questions about whether audiences actually want this kind of storytelling.
Founded by Edward Saatchi and the late Pete Billington in 2018 following their work at Oculus Studio, Fable operates an online entertainment platform focused on generative storytelling, building on and blending AI, VR, and narrative craft.
Billington, an Emmy-winning director, helped pioneer interactive media with The Wolves in the Walls, a VR adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s book. He passed away in March, shortly before the start of Showrunner, the company’s flagship user-generated animation tool.
The platform allows users to input a prompt or upload a photo, instantly generating voiced, animated episodes with custom characters. The network’s opening titles include Exit Valley, a Family Guy-style satire of Silicon Valley figures, and Ikeworld, a surreal romantic comedy set in IKEA.
Licensing intellectual property remains among the biggest hurdles in generative entertainment, especially for studios wary of handing narrative control to users.
Asked about this challenge, Saatchi told Decrypt the solution may lie in building purpose-trained models that reflect the same care and coherence of the original works.
“In terms of traditional IP, we are in talks with studios about building models around their storyworlds,” Saatchi said. “In the example of a Star Wars model, users would pay to create episodes, scenes and stories with it, with a revshare to Disney and terms of service stating that Disney owns that content.”
“A whole new artistic medium”
That openness to collaboration doesn’t mean Saatchi is blind to the risks.
In an earlier interview with Variety, he acknowledged the uncertainty around whether audiences actually want to participate in storytelling.
“Maybe nobody wants this and it won’t work,” Saatchi said. “We’ve seen false starts before—VR was supposed to explode when headsets passed a million units. It didn’t.”
The same tension mirrors Saatchi’s open acknowledgement.
While he sees Showrunner as a step toward co-creative media, he draws a clear distinction between superficial prompt-based output and deeply considered narratives.
Instead of AI tools letting people just make what they want, Saatchi told Decrypt their platform could instead provide “a coherent playable storyworld with care and attention from artists.”
Saatchi argues AI video tools have been understood primarily as production shortcuts, having been “accepted in Hollywood as a VFX timesaver.” But with Showrunner, Saatchi sees generative content as “a whole new artistic medium.”
The product’s closed alpha drew 10,000 users, and the waitlist has since surpassed 100,000, the company said. Fable will keep viewing free but plans to charge creators $10–$20 monthly for credits to generate hundreds of scenes. Users can export and share videos on platforms like YouTube.
An Amazon representative told Decrypt that the investment has come from its Alexa Fund, which provides venture capital funding for voice innovation, artificial intelligence, hardware, and entertainment, and “not Amazon overall.” The investment was in the company, not a product, the spokesperson clarified.
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